The plan, which covers 90 of the 257 transplant hospitals in the U.S., proposes a points system to grade the included hospitals. Under this points system, a hospital earns a point for any successful kidney transplant, but 1.2 points for a kidney transplant with a low-income recipient as part of a 'health equity performance adjustment.'
While the system is ostensibly colorblind, the Biden administration's announcement gives race as a motivating factor: Becerra stated that the policy represents the Biden administration 'taking concrete steps to remove racial bias' from the transplant system.
The Biden administration's plan allocates up to $8,000 per transplant to each hospital that meets the transplant quota, while hospitals that do not meet the quota may have to pay up to $2,000 per transplant.
This move mirrors Covid-era measures that included point-based systems for the allocation of monoclonal antibodies. In these explicitly race-based allocation schemes, minority status was oftentimes weighted higher or as highly as age or comorbidities.
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