Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred H.B. No. 284, H.D. 1, S.D. 1, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to:

Your Committee finds that school nurses can be a definite asset for schools to help identify sick or injured students. Also, your Committee finds that the medically needy program which allows the State to appropriate funds to expand coverage to persons who are above the Medicaid income level, but are low income and medically needy are being negatively impacted by restrictive regulations and should receive financial help.

Your Committee has amended this bill by deleting the grant-in-aid for the St. Francis Medical Center renal dialysis program. In its place, your Committee has inserted an appropriation for a grant to the Organ Donor Center of Hawaii from the Hawaii organ and tissue education special fund, as provided in H.B. No. 1357, H.D. 1.

Your Committee finds that organ donation is slowly increasing in Hawaii due to a number of factors, including the education of persons in many ethnic groups who generally declined to make donations in the past. Life saving transplants are now no longer rare or experimental. Almost all kidney dialysis patients will eventually require a transplant. Accordingly, your Committee finds that a grant to help the Organ Donor Center of Hawaii do their job more effectively can probably give more immediate relief not only to kidney patients, but to a wider range of organ transplant recipients as well.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Ways and Means that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 284, H.D. 1, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 284, H.D. 1, S.D. 2.