Congress targets private equity health care deals with criminal penalties and forced transparency
H.R. 7537 — Corporate Crimes Against Health Care Act · Filed by Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) · Introduced Feb 12, 2026 · 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 creates criminal and civil penalties for executives and investors at health care companies that experience financial distress (missed payroll, closure, bankruptcy) after being acquired or restructured, allowing the government to claw back compensation earned in the 10 years before or after the triggering event. It also bans health care providers from selling assets to or pledging them as collateral to real estate investment trusts (REITs), eliminates tax breaks for REIT dividends, requires detailed public reporting of health care ownership and financial structures, and mandates a study on profit-driven practices in health care.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core function is to impose criminal and civil liability on executives and investors whose conduct contributes to health care company distress, combined with mandatory public disclosure of health care ownership and financial structures. It is fundamentally a regulatory enforcement and transparency bill, not a tax or subsidy measure.
- Sections 4–5 repeal REIT tax benefits for health care property and eliminate qualified REIT dividends from qualified business income deductions. Substantively unrelated to criminal/civil enforcement or reporting.
- Section 7 mandates a 3-year HHS Inspector General study on profit-driven health care practices. Related thematically but procedurally separate from enforcement and reporting mechanisms.
What the text implies
- The 10-year lookback/lookforward window for clawback creates retroactive liability for executives whose compensation was lawful when earned, potentially chilling M&A activity in health care and raising constitutional takings concerns.
- The 'unjust enrichment' definition is broad and fact-dependent (e.g., 'interest coverage in excess of 100 percent' at time of compensation), creating significant litigation risk and uncertainty for health care executives and boards.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
Health care workers and employees (wage recovery, pension protection); Patients and communities (potential service preservation, reduced cost-cutting); Government (clawed-back compensation deposited to Treasury)