Ways and Means Advances Bipartisan Health, Social Security, and Tax Administration Legislation To Improve Everyday Lives

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Ways and Means Committee has advanced legislation to solve key challenges facing seniors, patients, and taxpayers - including:

• Improving seniors' access to multi-cancer early detection screenings and breakthrough medical products.
• Continuing the successful "Hospital at Home" program to treat Medicare beneficiaries in the convenience and comfort of their own home.
• Helping medical providers better use technology in reporting quality measures.
• Informing retirees more clearly of the benefit levels based on when they choose to begin claiming their Social Security benefits.
• Aiding parents looking to protect their child's identity after that child's Social Security number is compromised.
• Ensuring rogue IRS agents are not levying fines and penalities on taxpayers without specific approval.
• Strengthening taxpayer rights in judicial proceedings before the U.S. Tax Court.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08)released the following statement after the Committee advanced nine health care, Social Security, and tax administration bills:

"The Ways and Means Committee is advancing policies that will improve the everyday lives of the American people. Seniors are a step closer to being able to use life-saving multi-cancer early detection screenings or benefiting from the latest breakthrough medical device. Medical providers will have greater flexibility to deliver hospital-level care to patients at home. Parents are closer to being able to better protect their child's identity in the face of potential Social Security fraud. Taxpayers will be further shielded from the IRS charging outrageous penalties. Across a variety of issue areas, Republicans and Democrats on the Committee are working together on bipartisan, common-sense solutions."

The Committee also approved the Committee's Views and Estimates for the fiscal year 2026 budget. This broad roadmap reaffirms the Committee's focus on fighting for workers, families, farmers, and small businesses.

Nancy Gardner Sewell Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act (H.R. 842)

• Medicare will spend an estimated $1 trillion on cancer care over the next decade with 75 percent being spent to treat late-stage cancer.
• According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), access to cancer screenings has given Americans a combined 12 million additional life years and added at least $6.5 trillion in additional economic benefit.
• New technologies on the market allow for the screening of multiple cancers at once with small samples of blood.
• Unfortunately, Medicare has no viable pathway for coverage of these innovative, new technologies within the next decade even though early cancer detection can help drive down health care costs over the long run.
• The bill provides transitional Medicare coverage for FDA-approved multi-cancer early detection screening tests for the cohort of beneficiaries most impacted by early screening.
• Newly eligible Medicare beneficiaries will receive access to covered multi-cancer screening tests, with those individuals continuing to receive coverage during their entire Medicare enrollment years.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 43-0.

Hospital Inpatient Services Modernization Act (H.R. 4313)

• The Hospital-at-Home Initiative (HaH) allows hospitals to provide inpatient level care to seniors in the comfort of their homes rather than in a hospital. More than 400 hospitals in nearly 40 states participate in the initiative, with 99 percent of patients reporting satisfaction with their care.
• HaH has been shown to help patients in multiple ways: lower discharge rates to institutional post-acute care, lower rates of emergency department visits, reduction in use of costly lab tests.
• The HaH program expires September 30, 2025, which means that Medicare will no longer pay for seniors to receive inpatient care in the home.
• The bill preserves Medicare patients' access to vital HaH services through 2030 and includes a comprehensive study to measure the program's cost and quality relative to in-hospital, inpatient care.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 44-0.

Health Care Efficiency Through Flexibility Act (H.R. 5347)

• Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are groups of providers participating in a value-based care initiative to reduce spending and improve health care quality.
• Over 10,000 participant providers are at federally qualified health centers, rural health clinics, and critical access hospitals.
• To participate, ACOs must submit quality measure data to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to inform their performance and shared savings awards - a time-consuming and expensive process.
• Electronic data such as digital quality measures (dQMs) have the potential to be 95 percent less expensive to report than traditional quality measures, potentially yielding up to $14 billion in national health care savings.
• CMS has failed to commit to a stable framework of quality reporting or provide a comprehensive timeline for transitioning ACOs to dQMs.
• The bill ensures stability in quality measure reporting methods through 2030, providing certainty and flexibility for smaller provider practices with less sophisticated EHRs and creates a dQM pilot program to prepare ACOs to modernize reporting and test best practices in quality measurement reporting.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 43-0.

Ensuring Patient Access to Critical Breakthrough Products Act (H.R. 5343)

• Breakthrough devices are those that utilize novel technology to treat a condition that has no other approved alternatives or the technology provides a significant benefit above existing therapies.
• Medicare coverage process for breakthrough devices after FDA approval remains a barrier. The lag time between FDA approval and Medicare coverage is often called the "valley of death" for innovators, with devices and patients waiting up to 5 years for Medicare determinations post FDA approval.
• This bill provides a distinct pathway for immediate four years of transitional Medicare coverage of breakthrough medical devices - mirroring the Trump Administration final rule and requires the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to make a permanent coverage determination by the end of the coverage period.
• This expedited coverage pathway will encourage more innovative medical devices to come to market and provide Medicare patients with needed treatments and cures quicker to reduce chronic disease and lower long term costs.
• Examples of breakthrough medical devices include treatments that reduce bleeding complications during open heart surgery, technology that disrupts cancer cell division, and a device that screens newly diagnosed diabetes patients to diagnose pancreatic cancer.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 38-3.

Tax Court Improvement Act (H.R. 5349)

• The U.S. Tax Court is a federal trial court established by Congress under Article I of the Constitution which specializes in adjudicating disputes over federal income tax.
• The Tax Court is the only forum in which taxpayers may litigate tax matters without having first paid the disputed tax in full.
• Inefficiencies at the Tax Court structure lead to problems in adjudicating cases, such as limited pre-trial discovery powers that cause unnecessary delays, judges are held to a different standard than other Federal judges, a special trial judge may not render the Tax Court's decision or order punishment, unclear authority to pause deadlines in cases.
• The bill authorizes the Tax Court to sign subpoenas to produce books, papers, documents, electronically stored information, or tangible things for purposes of discovery or evidence, prior to a hearing.
• Judges are held to the standards for disqualification as other Federal judges.
• Enhances the efficiency of judicial review and ensures security and civility in trials and other judicial proceedings.
• Clarifies that the Tax Court has jurisdiction to extend a taxpayer's deadline where timely filing was impossible or impractical.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 30-0.

Fair and Accountable IRS Reviews (FAIR) Act (H.R. 5346)

• Currently, an IRS agent's "immediate supervisor" provides a signature of approval at the initial determination of a tax penalty.
• A recent IRS rule significantly weakened taxpayer protections by allowing IRS agents to shop around for sympathetic supervisors. This circular definition is so broad that IRS agents can obtain approval to apply tax penalties on taxpayers from virtually any other employee.
• The bill clarifies that supervisory approval of a penalty is timely only if the person proposing such penalty obtains the approval in writing prior to any written communication to a taxpayer with respect to such penalty.
• The written approval must be provided by the immediate supervisor of the person proposing the penalty or such other higher supervisory person as the Secretary may identify.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 44-0.

Claiming Age Clarity Act (H.R. 5284)

• Studies show that people are confused by the terms describing benefit claiming ages and are generally uninformed about how their claiming decisions affect their monthly benefits.
• As a result, many of today's seniors are missing out on substantial retirement income because of suboptimal claiming decisions.
• The bill directs the Social Security Commissioner to change the terminology the SSA uses when describing benefit claiming ages to better reflect the implications of claiming decisions.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 41-1.

Improving Social Security's Service to Victims of Identity Theft Act (H.R. 5345)

• In 2024, there were more than 3,158 reported data breaches resulting in the issuance of roughly 1.3 billion mandatory data breach notices to victims. More than 1,800 of the breaches included Social Security numbers (SSN).
• To resolve an issue related to SSN misuse or a lost Social Security card, an individual may be faced with multiple, different processes requiring them to speak to multiple, different SSA employees. Victims report they are often provided conflicting information.
• The bill requires the Social Security Administration (SSA) to provide victims of identity theft with a single point of contact at the agency when the misuse of their SSN results in the need to resolve an issue with the SSA or when their Social Security card is lost in the mail.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 39-1.

Social Security Child Protection Act (H.R. 5348)

• In 2022, roughly 1.7 million children were the victims of identity fraud.
• The time between theft of a Social Security number (SSN) and its misuse can be many years. Child victims of identity theft often learn of the theft-or are harmed from misuse-years after.
• Before the Social Security Administration (SSA) will issue a new SSN, a numberholder is required to not only show that their SSN has been misused by a third party, but also that this misuse caused actual harm or disadvantaged the numberholder.
• The bill requires the SSA to issue a new SSN to a child under the age of 14 in certain circumstances when that child's Social Security card has been compromised due to loss or theft.

Read the one pager here.

The bill passed the Committee with a vote of 43-1.