EASE Act of 2025

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Bill ID: 119/hr/2533
Last Updated: April 6, 2025

Sponsored by

Rep. Arrington, Jodey C. [R-TX-19]

ID: A000375

Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law

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1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.

2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.

3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.

4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.

5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.

6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.

7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!

Bill Summary

Another bill, another opportunity for our esteemed lawmakers to pretend they care about the welfare of their constituents while actually serving the interests of their real masters: lobbyists and corporate donors.

**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The EASE Act of 2025 (HR 2533) claims to improve access to specialty health services for certain Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. How noble. In reality, this bill is a Trojan horse designed to enrich telehealth companies and their investors while further fragmenting our already broken healthcare system.

**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends the Social Security Act to require the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) to test a model that uses digital modalities (telehealth, remote technologies) to provide specialty health services. The model will be implemented through agreements with selected provider networks, which must meet certain criteria, including being nonprofit entities with an established record of supporting rural and underserved communities.

**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects:

* Telehealth companies and their investors, who will reap the benefits of increased government funding and expanded market share. * Rural and underserved communities, who might see some marginal improvements in access to specialty care, but at what cost? * Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, who will be subjected to more experimentation with unproven models that may compromise their quality of care.

**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a perfect example of the "solution-in-search-of-a-problem" approach. By promoting telehealth as a panacea for rural healthcare woes, lawmakers are ignoring the root causes of these issues: inadequate funding, lack of infrastructure, and systemic inequalities.

The EASE Act will likely:

* Increase costs for Medicare and Medicaid programs without addressing underlying inefficiencies. * Further concentrate healthcare resources in the hands of corporate interests, exacerbating existing disparities. * Provide a windfall for telehealth companies, which may not necessarily translate to better patient outcomes.

In conclusion, this bill is a cynical attempt to appease rural voters while serving the interests of corporate donors. It's a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, designed to mask the symptoms rather than address the underlying disease. Our lawmakers should be ashamed of themselves for peddling such obvious nonsense.

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No campaign finance data available for Rep. Arrington, Jodey C. [R-TX-19]

Project 2025 Policy Matches

This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.

Introduction

Moderate 60.0%
Pages: 500-502

— 468 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and consumer choice for Medicaid recipients must go together as standard components of the safety net, especially for able-bodied recipients. Medicaid recipients, like the rest of Americans, should be given both the freedom to choose their health plans and the responsibility to contribute to their health care costs at a level that is appropriate to protect the taxpayer. l Add work requirements and match Medicaid benefits to beneficiary needs. Because Medicaid serves a broad and diverse group of individuals, it should be flexible enough to accommodate different designs for different groups. For example, CMS should launch a robust “personal option” to allow families to use Medicaid dollars to secure coverage outside of the Medicaid program. CMS should also: 1. Clarify that states have the ability to adopt work incentives for able- bodied individuals (similar to what is required in other welfare programs) and the ability to broaden the application of targeted premiums and cost sharing to higher-income enrollees. 2. Add targeted time limits or lifetime caps on benefits to disincentivize permanent dependence.34 l Allow private health insurance. Congress should allow states the option of contributing to a private insurance benefit for all members of the family in a flexible account that rewards healthy behaviors. This reform should also allow catastrophic coverage combined with an account similar to a health savings account (HSA) for the direct purchase of health care and payment of cost sharing for most of the population. l Increase flexible benefit redesign without waivers. CMS should add flexibility to eliminate obsolete mandatory and optional benefit requirements and, for able-bodied recipients, eliminate benefit mandates that exceed those in the private market. This should include flexibility to redesign eligibility, financing, and service delivery of long-term care to serve the most vulnerable and truly needy and eliminate middle-income to upper- income Medicaid recipients. l Eliminate current waiver and state plan processes. CMS should allow providers to make payment reforms without cumbersome waivers or state plan amendment processes where possible. More broadly, the federal government’s role should be oversight on broad indicators like cost effectiveness and health measures like quality, health improvement, and — 469 — Department of Health and Human Services wellness and should give the balance of responsibility for Medicaid program management to states. This reform would include adding Section 111535 waiver requirements in some cases (such as imposing work requirements for able-bodied adults) while rescinding requirements in others (such as non–health care benefits and services related to climate change). AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE l Remove barriers to direct primary care. Direct primary care (DPC) is an innovative health care delivery model in which doctors contract directly with patients for their care on a subscription basis regardless of how or where the care is provided. The DPC model is improving patient access, driving higher quality and lower cost, and strengthening the doctor– patient relationship. DPC has faced many challenges from government policymakers, including overly exuberant attempts at regulation and misclassification. Changes should clarify that DPC’s fixed fee for care does not constitute insurance in the context of health savings accounts.36 l Revisit the No Surprises Act on surprise medical billing. The No Surprises Act37 protected consumers against balance bills, but it also established a deeply flawed system for resolving payment disputes between insurers and providers. This government-mandated dispute resolution process has sown confusion among arbiters and regulators as judges have sought to ascertain its meaning. The No Surprises Act should scrap the dispute resolution process in favor of a truth-in-advertising approach that will protect consumers and free doctors, insurers, and arbiters from confused and conflicting standards for resolving disputes that the disputing parties can best resolve themselves.38 l Facilitate the development of shared savings and reference pricing plan options. Under traditional insurance, patients who choose lower- cost care do not benefit financially from that choice. Barriers to rewarding patients for cost-saving decisions should be removed. CMS should ensure that shared savings and reference pricing models that reward consumers are permitted. l Separate the subsidized ACA exchange market from the non- subsidized insurance market. The Affordable Care Act has made insurance more expensive and less competitive, and the ACA subsidy scheme simply masks these impacts. To make health insurance coverage more affordable for those who are without government subsidies, CMS should develop a plan to separate the non-subsidized insurance market

About These Correlations

Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.