Congress restores federal hospital funding to Tennessee after years of cuts
H.R. 6393 — DSH in Tennessee Act · Filed by Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) · 6 cosponsors · Introduced Dec 3, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill restores federal Medicaid funding for Tennessee hospitals designated as disproportionate-share hospitals (DSH), which serve large numbers of uninsured and low-income patients. Starting in fiscal year 2026, Tennessee will receive a permanent annual DSH allotment equal to what it received in 2015, adjusted annually for inflation, reversing a prior reduction and placing Tennessee on the same funding trajectory as other low-DSH states.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a permanent restoration of federal DSH payments to a single state, reversing a prior reduction and indexing future payments to inflation. This is a targeted fiscal allocation to support hospital operations serving vulnerable populations.
What the text implies
- The bill ties Tennessee's DSH allotment to its FY2015 baseline, which may be higher or lower than what a formula-based allocation would yield under current law, creating a state-specific carve-out that deviates from standard Medicaid DSH distribution methodology.
- By exempting Tennessee from the TennCare Demonstration Project terms and the standard DSH table in paragraph (2), the bill overrides negotiated state-federal agreements and may set a precedent for other states to seek similar restorations.
The full analysis lists 3 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
Tennessee hospitals (particularly disproportionate-share hospitals); Hospital systems serving uninsured and low-income populations in Tennessee