Living organ donors gain protection from income-based reimbursement cuts
S. 957 — Honor Our Living Donors Act · Filed by Ben Luján (D-NM) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced Mar 11, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill amends the organ donation reimbursement program under the Public Health Service Act to prohibit grant recipients from considering an organ recipient's income when deciding how much to reimburse living donors for their expenses. It also removes language suggesting organ recipients might make payments to donors, and requires annual reporting on whether the program has adequate funding to cover all donor expenses.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core function is to strengthen protections and equitable treatment for living organ donors by removing income-based discrimination in reimbursement decisions and adding transparency requirements.
What the text implies
- Removal of language about organ recipients making payments (Section 3) may clarify that donation is not a commercial transaction, reinforcing the ethical framework of organ donation as altruistic.
- Annual reporting requirement creates a public record of funding adequacy, potentially exposing chronic underfunding and creating political pressure for appropriations increases.
- By decoupling reimbursement from recipient income, the bill may increase donation rates among lower-income recipients who previously faced reduced reimbursement, improving equity in access to transplants.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Living organ donors—typically lower-income individuals—are protected from having their reimbursement reduced based on the recipient's wealth. The bill ensures equitable treatment and removes a perverse incentive that could discourage donation by poorer recipients. Annual reporting adds transparency and accountability to ensure adequate funding.
Who stands to gain
- living organ donors (individuals receiving reimbursement for donation expenses)
Named in the bill
Public Health Service Act, Section 377, organ donors, organ recipients, grant recipients, Secretary (HHS), Congress
Where it stands
3 cosponsors: 2 Republicans, 1 Democrats.
- Mar 11, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Mar 11, 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”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
4 lobbying clients named this bill on 5 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $320,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 6 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 72% of bills with at least one filing.
Ben Luján, the sponsor, reported $1,880,294 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- National Kidney Foundation — $140,000 on 2 filings
- Nonprofit Kidney Care Alliance — $90,000 on 1 filing
- American Society of Nephrology — $60,000 on 1 filing
- American Society of Nephrology — $30,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 9, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,018 characters) on Aug 14, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 9, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Living organ donors gain protection from income-based reimbursement cuts” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s957 Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.