Medicare patients gain right to sue insurers for payment failures
H.R. 4056 — RAMP Act · Filed by Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Jun 20, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill amends Medicare law to allow patients to sue their health insurance plans directly for damages when those plans fail to pay claims as the primary insurer or fail to reimburse Medicare appropriately. Currently, patients lack a private right to sue for such failures; this bill creates one.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is to create a private cause of action—a legal right to sue—for patients against health insurers. This is a procedural/remedial change that empowers individuals to enforce existing payment obligations through litigation.
What the text implies
- The bill does not specify the measure of damages (actual losses, statutory penalties, attorney fees, punitive damages), leaving that to existing law and judicial interpretation—the scope of recovery is unclear from this text alone.
- Litigation may increase administrative burden on insurers and potentially raise insurance premiums if defense costs and damage awards are passed to consumers.
The full analysis lists 4 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
plaintiff attorneys (litigation fees); patients (damage awards, if successful)