Congress shields living organ donors from insurance penalties

What it does

This bill prohibits life, disability, and long-term care insurers from denying coverage, raising premiums, or changing terms based solely on a person's status as a living organ donor—unless the insurer can prove actual, unique, and material actuarial risk. It also clarifies that organ donation surgery and recovery qualify as serious health conditions under the Family and Medical Leave Act, entitling employees to protected leave, and requires the Department of Health and Human Services to update educational materials about living organ donation and these new protections.

Why we flagged it

The bill's core function is to shield living organ donors from insurance discrimination and ensure they retain workplace protections during donation and recovery. It is a straightforward civil-rights and labor-protection measure.

What the text implies

• Insurers may respond by tightening underwriting on other health factors or increasing baseline premiums across the board to offset donation-related risk they can no longer price individually, potentially raising costs for all policyholders.
• The 'actual, unique, and material actuarial risks' standard is undefined and may generate litigation over what constitutes sufficient evidence for an insurer to justify differential treatment.
• Federal employees gain an additional leave option (section 6327 substitution) that private-sector donors do not, creating a two-tier protection system.
• The bill does not address life insurance underwriting for recipients of transplants, only donors, leaving a gap in protection for the other side of the donation equation.

Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.

Who it affects

Ordinary citizens who donate organs gain concrete protections: insurers cannot penalize them for donation, and they retain job-protected leave for surgery and recovery. These are direct rights expansions with no offsetting public cost. The bill removes a barrier to altruistic donation that may have deterred potential donors.

Named in the bill

Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, State insurance regulators, Life insurance industry, Disability insurance industry, Long-term care insurance industry, Federal civil service employees, Private-sector employees

Where it stands

50 cosponsors: 31 Democrats, 18 Republicans, 1 Independents.

• May 1, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
• May 1, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions”
• Feb 26, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature…”

Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.

Money around this bill

17 lobbying clients named this bill on 28 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $10,915,837 in lobbying spend. A filing names 8 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.

More lobbying clients named this bill than 96% of bills with at least one filing.

Tom Cotton, the sponsor, reported $1,292,206 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.

• American Council of Life Insurers — $4,085,837 on 3 filings
• The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company — $3,130,000 on 3 filings
• Fresenius Medical Care North America — $1,190,000 on 1 filing
• Dialysis Patient Citizens — $500,000 on 1 filing
• Pacific Life Insurance Company — $480,000 on 1 filing

Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.