Lake County Gazette

More paid leave for Illinois organ donors may be on the horizon.

The sponsor of a state Senate bill that would provide tax breaks to state employers who provide paid leave to organ donors recently said her legislation would relieve one burden suffered by people on organ donation wait lists.

"Would-be donors face many challenges and barriers that keep them from giving the gift of life," Sen. Julie Morrison said in a May 3 Facebook post.

Morrison's comment came a couple of weeks after the Senate passed Senate Bill 1918 and shortly after WCIA featured Monica Fox, a decades-long healthcare worker who was diagnosed with kidney disease in 2013. Fox spent three years on dialysis until she was matched with a donor.

"Stories like that of Monica Fox's is the reason I am spearheading Senate Bill 1918 — which would create an organ donation tax credit for private employers," Morrison said in her Facebook post.

Last month, SB 1918, which would provide up to $1,000 in tax breaks for businesses who provide their organ-donating employees up to 30 days of paid time off, unanimously passed the state Senate.

"The measure creates an optional organ donation tax credit for private employers," Morrison said in a statement she issued shortly after Senate passage of SB 1918. "The credit is applicable if the employer allows its employees the option to take a paid leave of absence for a minimum of 30 days for serving as an organ or bone marrow donor.

The bill currently is in the House Revenue and Finance Committee.

There's no reasonable doubt that people are waiting - and dying while they wait - for an organ transplant, with kidney's being one of the best examples. On average, more than 3,000 new patients are added to the kidney waiting list every month and 13 die every day waiting, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

In 2014 alone, almost 4,800 patients died while waiting for a kidney transplant while more than 3,500 more became too sick to receive a kidney transplant.

Dialysis is expensive and everyone who pays taxes is helping to pay to keep about almost 750,000 patients alive in the U.S. alone, according to figures compiled by the University of California San Francisco. Patients with kidney failure make up about 1% of the Medicare-covered population but account for 7% of Medicare's budget.

Medicare spent $35 billion on kidney failure patients in 2016 and hemodialysis costs Medicare an average of $90,000 per patient per year, a total of about $28 billion, according to the UCSF figures.

The federal government picks up the tab for about 80% of dialysis costs for most patients, with private health insurance or state Medicaid programs chipping in as well, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

Morrison told WCIA that even if every patient currently on the wait list was magically matched with living donors and all of their employers maxed out the benefits for a full 30 days off work, the state would pay about $1,700 per donor.

"Which is a fraction of what it cost to provide health care, and dialysis," Morrison said in the WCIA news story. "Not to mention the human suffering, the loss of work and everything for someone who needs a transplant."