Bill cuts Medicare Advantage plan payments starting in 2028.
H.R. 9544 — Save MEDICARE Act of 2026 · Filed by Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) · 52 cosponsors · Introduced Jun 30, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
The Save MEDICARE Act changes how the federal government pays Medicare Advantage plans. It removes certain diagnosis codes that plans may use to inflate payments. It lowers benchmark payments and increases audits of plan billing. The bill requires Medicare Advantage and drug plans to repay the VA for veteran care. Providers can no longer get bonuses based on coding volume.
Who it affects
Medicare beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage plans may see lower premiums if plans pass savings along. Plans may shrink doctor networks, cut extra benefits, or raise patient costs. Sicker patients may have the hardest time switching plans.
One thing to notice
The bill lowers what Medicare Advantage plans get paid. The text shows plans may cut benefits or raise patient costs instead.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
52 cosponsors: 52 Democrats.
- Jun 30, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jun 30, 2026 — Referred to House Committee on Veterans' Affairs and House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, and in addition to the Committees on Energy and Commerce, and…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 1 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $20,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 9 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 0% of bills with any report.
Lloyd Doggett, who sponsored the bill, received $142,750 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Center for Health and Democracy — $20,000 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- Medicare Advantage — A type of health plan run by private companies for people on Medicare.
- benchmark payments — The amount the federal government pays Medicare Advantage plans each month.
- diagnosis codes — Numbers doctors use to record what illness or injury a patient has.
- audits — Official checks to make sure billing and payments are correct.
- VA — The Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides health care to military veterans.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the full bill text on Jul 6, 2026; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,206 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 Jun 2026 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 17, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-17.
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