{"id":25255,"date":"2019-03-05T15:57:05","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T21:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=25255"},"modified":"2019-03-05T16:01:42","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T22:01:42","slug":"protections-sought-for-organ-donors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=25255","title":{"rendered":"Protections sought for organ donors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Banking, Commerce and Insurance Committee heard testimony March 5 on a bill that would prevent insurance companies from discriminating against living organ donors.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Dan Hughes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB228, introduced by Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango, would adopt the Living Donor Protection Act. The bill would make it illegal for an insurance company to:
\n\u2022 decline or limit life, disability or long-term care coverage to a living organ donor;
\n\u2022 preclude someone from donating all or part of an organ as a condition for receiving life, disability or long-term care coverage;
\n\u2022 increase a donor\u2019s premium because he or she is a donor; or
\n\u2022 discriminate against a donor who has life, disability or long-term care coverage.<\/p>\n

Hughes said studies show that transplants from living donors are more effective than those from deceased donors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bill will protect Nebraskans who are giving the gift of life,\u201d Hughes said.<\/p>\n

Gary Bodenheimer testified in support of the bill. Bodenheimer said he found out six years ago that he has kidney disease, which is now in stage 4. He said that there are approximately 450 people like him who are on the state\u2019s organ recipient list.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe clock is ticking,\u201d Bodenheimer said. \u201cAnything we can do to make organ donation easier saves lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert Bell, executive director of the Nebraska Insurance Federation, testified against LB228.
\nHe said the language of the bill is too vague and could hinder an insurance company\u2019s ability to charge appropriate premiums.<\/p>\n

Bell said donors who have been denied coverage or charged higher rates should seek quotes from multiple insurers.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause one company is doing it doesn\u2019t mean the other companies in the market are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The committee took no immediate action on the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Banking, Commerce and Insurance Committee heard testimony March 5 on a bill that would prevent insurance companies from discriminating against living organ donors. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[147],"class_list":["post-25255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking-commerce-and-insurance","tag-sen-dan-hughes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/LB228Hughes3-5-19a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25257,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25255\/revisions\/25257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}