Christmas Miracle? Biden’s CMS Abandons “Racial Equity” Agenda for Kidney Transplants Following WILL’s Public Comment

The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) is applauding the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for its recent decision to back away from certain components of a proposed federal rule that would have required kidney transplant hospitals to submit “health equity plans” to the agency under the threat of penalty.

The rule—known as the Increasing Organ Transplant Access Model or “IOTA Model”—will pilot a scoring system that informs Medicare payments to (or from) participating kidney transplant hospitals in hopes of incentivizing hospitals to boost organ transplantation access.

But because CMS’s original proposal requiring health equity plans would have encouraged transplant hospitals to employ racially discriminatory considerations against potential kidney transplant candidates and recipients, WILL voiced its constitutional and legal concerns about the model in a public comment this past July.

Following comments from WILL and others, CMS will no longer require participating kidney transplant hospitals to submit health equity plans. However, the agency has nevertheless finalized the rule to allow transplant hospitals the option to submit voluntary plans as briefly summarized in the screenshots below. Transplant hospitals that choose to submit voluntary health equity plans under the final rule should be aware that race-based policies, including racial balancing schemes, may subject them to liability.