To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to require Medicare Advantage plans to automatically reconsider determinations denying coverage.

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Bill ID: 119/hr/6110
Last Updated: November 20, 2025

Sponsored by

Rep. Pocan, Mark [D-WI-2]

ID: P000607

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Bill Summary

Another exercise in legislative theater, courtesy of the esteemed members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce and uncover the underlying disease.

**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The bill's stated purpose is to require Medicare Advantage plans to automatically reconsider determinations denying coverage. How noble. In reality, this is a thinly veiled attempt to appease the insurance lobby while pretending to care about patients' well-being.

**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends Section 1852(g)(2)(A) of the Social Security Act by making three changes:

1. Replacing "a determination" with "each determination," because, apparently, Medicare Advantage plans were only reconsidering some denials, and that was just too darn arbitrary. 2. Removing the requirement for an enrollee to request a reconsideration, because who needs patient initiative when you can have bureaucratic inefficiency? 3. Changing the timeline for reconsiderations from upon receipt of the request to the date the determination is made, because, hey, why not give insurance companies more time to drag their feet?

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

* Medicare Advantage plans (the real beneficiaries of this bill) * Insurance companies (who will continue to reap profits while pretending to care about patients) * Patients and enrollees (who might, just might, see a slight improvement in the already Byzantine process of appealing denied coverage)

**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. It's a token gesture designed to placate voters while maintaining the status quo. The real impact will be:

* Increased administrative costs for Medicare Advantage plans, which will likely be passed on to patients and taxpayers * More opportunities for insurance companies to delay and deny coverage, under the guise of "automatic reconsideration" * A minor, temporary boost in patient satisfaction, until they realize that nothing has actually changed

In short, this bill is a masterclass in legislative obfuscation. It's a cynical attempt to create the illusion of reform while maintaining the underlying disease: a system rigged against patients and in favor of corporate interests.

Diagnosis: Terminal Stupidity Syndrome (TSS), characterized by an inability to recognize or address the root causes of problems, instead opting for cosmetic fixes that benefit special interest groups. Prognosis: Poor. Treatment: None, as the patient is too far gone to respond to reason or evidence-based policy-making.

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Rep. Pocan, Mark [D-WI-2]

Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle

Total Contributions
$77,400
21 donors
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$11,900
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MARQUIS, DUSTIN L
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VECCHIARELLI, DANIEL
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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

Low 57.7%
Pages: 497-499

— 465 — Department of Health and Human Services 1. Make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option. 2. Give beneficiaries direct control of how they spend Medicare dollars. 3. Remove burdensome policies that micromanage MA plans. 4. Replace the complex formula-based payment model with a competitive bidding model. 5. Reconfigure the current risk adjustment model. 6. Remove restrictions on key benefits and services, including those related to prescription drugs, hospice care, and medical savings account plans.26 Legacy Medicare Reform. Legislation reforming legacy (non-MA) Medicare should: l Base payments on the health status of the patient or intensity of the service rather than where the patient happens to receive that service. l Replace the bureaucrat-driven fee-for-service system with value- based payments to empower patients to find the care that best serves their needs. l Codify price transparency regulations. l Restructure 340B drug subsidies27 toward beneficiaries rather than hospitals. l Repeal harmful health policies enacted under the Obama and Biden Administrations such as the Medicare Shared Savings Program28 and Inflation Reduction Act.29 Medicare Part D Reform. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) created a drug price negotiation program in Medicare that replaced the existing private-sector negotiations in Part D with government price controls for prescription drugs. These government price controls will limit access to medications and reduce patient access to new medication. This “negotiation” program should be repealed, and reforms in Part D that will have meaningful impact for seniors should be pursued. Other reforms should include eliminating the coverage gap in Part D, reducing the government share in — 466 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise the catastrophic tier, and requiring manufacturers to bear a larger share. Until the IRA is repealed, an Administration that is required to implement it must do so in a way that is prudent with its authority, minimizing the harmful effects of the law’s policies and avoiding even worse unintended consequences.30 Medicaid. Over the past 45 years, Medicaid and the health safety net have evolved into a cumbersome, complicated, and unaffordable burden on nearly every state. The program is failing some of the most vulnerable patients; is a prime target for waste, fraud, and abuse; and is consuming more of state and federal budgets. The dramatic increase in Medicaid expenditures is due in large part to the ACA (Obamacare), which mandates that states must expand their Medicaid eligibility standards to include all individuals at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), and the public health emergency, which has prohibited states from performing basic eligibility reviews. The overlap of available benefits among the various health agencies has led to a complex, confusing system that is nearly impossible to navigate—even for recipients. Recipients are often faced with a “welfare cliff” of benefit losses as they earn above a certain amount, which is contrary to the fundamental purpose of empowering individuals to achieve economic independence. Benefits increasingly involve nonmedical services such as air conditioning and housing, many of which are already handled by departments other than HHS. Improper payments within Medicaid are higher than those of any other federal program. These payments are evidence of the inappropriateness of Medicaid’s expansion, which, stemming largely from public health emergency maintenance of effort (MOE) requirements and the Affordable Care Act, has crowded out the primary targets of these programs: those who are most in need. True health care reform cannot be accomplished in a bureaucratic silo or only through Medicaid and health safety net programs. Reform of the tax code is also essential to genuine, effective reform of our health care system. All components of the health care system should be part of the reform efforts, and it is imperative that the system be modified to assist states with their current programs. Therefore, the next Administration should: l Reform financing. Allow states to have a more flexible, accountable, predictable, transparent, and efficient financing mechanism to deliver medical services. This system should include a more balanced or blended match rate, block grants, aggregate caps, or per capita caps. Any financial system should be designed to encourage and incentivize innovation and the efficient delivery of health care services. Federal and state financial participation in the Medicaid program should be rational, predictable, and reasonable. It should also incentivize states to save money and improve the quality of health care.

Introduction

Low 56.2%
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

Introduction

Low 51.9%
Pages: 497-499

— 464 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l The Risk Adjustment Data Validation (RADV) rule; l The Medicare Advantage Qualifying Payment Arrangement Incentive (MAQI) demonstration; and l The Global and Professional Direct Contracting (GPDC, rebranded as the Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health or ACO REACH) model. Additionally, regulations should advance site neutrality by eliminating the inpa- tient-only list and expanding the ambulatory surgical center covered procedures list. Medicare generally pays more for inpatient hospital procedures and less for the same procedures performed in an outpatient setting. Whether a medical ser- vice is delivered in a physician’s office, a clinic, or a hospital setting, the Medicare payment for that service should be the same. CMS should expand the application of site-neutral payment options to more settings. Such a policy would level the playing field among providers and remove the financial disabilities for medical professionals who would compete with hospital systems.23 Finally, HHS needs to restore and enhance conscience protection regulations that allow medical practitioners to participate in federal health care programs without being compelled to provide sex changes or similar services. LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS l Remove restrictions on physician-owned hospitals. The Affordable Care Act (ACA)24 imposed restrictions prohibiting Medicare from reimbursing physician-owned and specialty hospitals. The current restrictions do little more than serve the special interests of large hospital systems and undercut consumer choice of high-quality, specialty care. These restrictions should be removed so that physician-owned hospitals can compete with other hospitals in serving Medicare patients.25 l Encourage more direct competition between Medicare Advantage and private plans. Medicare Advantage (MA), a system of competing private health plans, is the major alternative to traditional Medicare for America’s large and growing cohort of seniors. The program provides beneficiaries with a wide range of competitive health plan choices—a richer set of benefits than traditional Medicare provides and at a reasonable cost. Equally as important, the MA program has been registering consistently high marks for superior performance in delivering high-quality care. Critical reforms are still needed to strengthen and improve the program for the future. Specifically:

Showing 3 of 5 policy matches

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.