HHS must seek an agreement with the National Academies to study how a free, secure national system could store and retrieve last wish documents. Access in the studied system would be limited to an individual’s authorized agent. The bill requires reports at 2 years and 4 years after enactment and does not launch the system.
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Legacy Act of 2025 is a House bill in committee. The latest recorded action: Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Latest action on H.R. 5861: Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Who this affects: The bill directly affects HHS and the National Academies by assigning them the job of studying and reporting on a possible national, secure way to store and retrieve certain end-of-life and medical decision documents. If the study happens, it also affects people who have these documents and the authorized agents who may need to access them, as well as clinicians and hospitals that rely on quickly finding a patient’s stated wishes.
Why this matters: People often have documents that spell out their medical and end-of-life wishes, but those documents can be hard to locate during a crisis. This bill matters because it asks for an expert, national-level study on whether a secure, confidential, free-to-use system could make those documents easier to find—while limiting access to an authorized agent. At the same time, it keeps the decision about building anything for later, so the real-world impact depends on what the study recommends and whether Congress or agencies take follow-up action.
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