Medicare expands oxygen access, adds respiratory therapist coverage, restores supplier payments
H.R. 2902 — SOAR Act of 2025 · Filed by David Valadao (R-CA) · 69 cosponsors · Introduced Apr 10, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
The SOAR Act removes supplemental oxygen from Medicare's competitive bidding program and establishes new payment rates based on regional fee schedules, with special protections for liquid oxygen. It adds respiratory therapist services as a covered Medicare benefit with add-on payments, requires electronic templates for medical necessity documentation, and establishes detailed beneficiary rights including supplier choice, 24-hour access, and grievance protections.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is removal of oxygen from competitive bidding and restoration of fee-schedule payments, coupled with new respiratory therapist coverage and detailed beneficiary protections. This is a coverage and access expansion, not a deregulation or carve-out.
What the text implies
- Liquid oxygen receives a payment floor of 200% of 2015 fee schedule (CPI-adjusted), substantially higher than other oxygen modalities, potentially incentivizing supplier focus on liquid oxygen over gaseous alternatives.
- Respiratory therapist add-on payments are non-budget-neutral, meaning they increase total Medicare spending without offsetting reductions elsewhere—cost impact depends on utilization rates and state scope-of-practice definitions.
- Electronic template requirement for medical necessity may reduce prior-authorization delays but shifts documentation burden to prescribing practitioners; template design (not specified in bill) will determine whether this eases or complicates claims.
- Beneficiary right to change suppliers and 24-hour on-call coverage impose operational costs on suppliers; smaller or rural suppliers may struggle to meet these obligations, potentially consolidating the market toward larger providers.
- Clinical inference restoration for audits (Section 301(H)) reverses post-2009 audit standards; audit outcomes will depend on how CMS interprets 'clinical judgment' in practice—potential for inconsistent enforcement.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Beneficiaries gain access to respiratory therapist services (new covered benefit), supplier choice, 24-hour on-call coverage, and documented service standards. Removal from competitive bidding and restoration of fee-schedule payments increases supplier viability, reducing risk of service disruption. Beneficiary rights and grievance protections strengthen accountability. The trade-off—higher Medicare payments to suppliers—is justified by documented service obligations and beneficiary protections
Who stands to gain
- Supplemental oxygen suppliers (durable medical equipment companies)
- Liquid oxygen providers (specialized subset)
- Respiratory therapists and respiratory therapy services
- Oxygen equipment manufacturers
Named in the bill
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare Administrative Contractors, Supplemental oxygen suppliers, Respiratory therapists, Durable Medical Equipment (DME) industry, Liquid oxygen providers, Prescribing practitioners, Patient advocates
Where it stands
69 cosponsors: 46 Democrats, 23 Republicans.
- Apr 10, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Apr 10, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Ways and Means and House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Ways and Means, for a…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
13 lobbying clients named this bill on 19 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $8,703,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 7 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 94% of bills with at least one filing.
David Valadao, the sponsor, reported $2,024,902 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- American Medical Association — $5,643,000 on 2 filings
- American Association for Homecare — $800,000 on 2 filings
- Accendra Health Inc. — $740,000 on 3 filings
- Medline — $400,000 on 1 filing
- Cystic Fibrosis Foundation — $270,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 22, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (22,830 characters) on Aug 13, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 22, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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