It’s fraud week in the House with floor consideration of more than a dozen fraud-related bills. The House also needs to figure out what to do Reconciliation 2.0 after Senate Republicans scored a goal with the passage of the immigration and security bill. Senate Republicans can’t high-five too much after Senate Democrats were able to block the shot to extend past June 12 Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which will now be the focus for the week. On the health sidelines, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) are set to release their June 2026 reports to Congress. So, let’s get into it. Welcome to the Week Ahead!
The Administration
President Trump signed a new executive order directing federal agencies to implement the Schedule Policy/Career reclassification by June 10. The change will make federal employees with significant influence over policy at-will employees, making it easier to fire them without cause and reducing their rights to appeal termination. Some senior officials at the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) have already received notice of their reclassification and more notices are expected to follow. With HHS looking to bring on 12,000 more employees, the changes in the executive order may make it more difficult to fill these roles.
The Senate
Senate HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) may have lost his Senate seat, but he’s not showing any signs of slowing down when it comes to advancing his health policy agenda. On June 3, Sen. Cassidy took to the Senate floor to call on the president to help move the senator’s health agenda, which includes increasing price transparency, expanding access to healthy foods, and giving money directly to patients. Chairman Cassidy has also promised a HELP Committee markup of bipartisan health bills, including S. 4189, which would expand the $35/month cap on the cost of insulin currently in place for Medicare beneficiaries to those with private insurance.
We are also seeing movement on the fiscal year 2027 (FY 27) appropriations process, even though Senate appropriators have yet to agree on topline numbers for FY27. The Senate Appropriations Committee is rescheduling the mark up of the FDA-Ag appropriations bill this week and holding hearings on the president’s budget request for other agencies.
The House
Health care transparency will be getting its time in the spotlight as the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee holds a legislative hearing focused on proposals to lower health care costs and increase health care transparency. The Committee is slated to consider 9 proposals ranging from publishing pricing lists for health insurers and hospitals to requiring additional information in Medicare Advantage encounter data and reporting related to ownership of health care facilities. We’ve also heard that concerns about the 340B Drug Pricing Program will be raised, specifically about how hospitals are spending the money generated from the rebate program.
Fraud is taking over the House floor, as various anti-fraud legislation is being considered. Multiple bills could have implications for health care programs, if passed, from creating a list of program areas presenting the greatest risk to federal funds to allowing for agency heads to pause and further review possibly fraudulent payments.
Our conversations on the Hill also indicate that the House Ways and Means Committee plans to markup health care legislation in June.
Other Health Care Hearings This Week
- June 9: House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections hearing on Locum Tenes providers
- June 9: House Appropriations Full Committee markup on FY 27 HHS budget request
- June 12: House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee field hearing on delivery quality and modern health care to Michigan’s Veterans
There You Have It
Games for the World Cup kick off this week across 16 host cities. The United States will face Paraguay as its first challenger on June 12. Will you be tuning in? Let us know. Make it a great week!