https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2024/05/28/south-carolina-adopts-insurance-rules-protecting-living-organ-donors/ (https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2024/05/28/south-carolina-adopts-insurance-rules-protecting-living-organ-donors/)
South Carolina Adopts Insurance Rules Protecting Living Organ Donors
By Allison Bell (https://www.thinkadvisor.com/author/profile/allison-bell/)
What You Need to Know
The new law blocks life, disability and long-term care insurers from making decisions based solely on organ donor status.
Similar bills introduced in Congress have strong bipartisan support.
The measures do let insurers consider actuarial risk when they are evaluating living donors.
South Carolina has become the 34th state to set rules life insurers must follow when taking applications for coverage from living organ donors.
Gov. Henry McMaster signed H. 2355 (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess125_2023-2024/bills/3255.htm), the bill creating the state's new Living Donor Protection Act, May 13.
The act blocks insurers from making decisions about life insurance, disability insurance or long-term care insurance based "based solely and without any additional actuarial risks upon the status of such person as a living organ donor."
The act affects product premiums and terms as well as insurers' decisions about whether to offer applicants coverage.
South Carolina has become the 34th state to adopt a living organ donor bill, and Congress is considering two similar bills, S. 1384 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1384/all-info) and H.R. 2923 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2923/all-info).
What it means: Measures like H. 2355 could make it a little easier for clients who need organ transplants to find donors, and they could make life easier for clients who want to be the donors.
The background: Living donors are people who donate their kidneys, lungs, parts of their livers, parts of their pancreas or parts of their intestines while they are still alive.
The United States has 108,000 people on organ transplant waiting lists, and 17 of those people die every day, according to data cited by members of the National Council of Insurance Legislators (https://ncoil.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NCOIL-Life-Insurance-Draft-Organ-Donor-Resolution-1.pdf) in a resolution supporting federal living donor protection legislation.
U.S. surgeons performed 46,630 organ transplants in 2023, and 6,958 of the 23,294 donors who provided the organs were living donors, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/view-data-reports/national-data/), a transplant support services organization.