Emergency powers bill shields private medical staffing from liability
S. 1701 — STORM Act · Filed by Ted Budd (R-NC) · Introduced May 8, 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 allows the President to certify private health care workforce platforms (gig-economy medical staffing companies) as emergency responders during declared disasters. It permits these platforms to deploy independent contractor health care workers across state lines without state medical licenses, and shields both the platforms and the contractors from liability for injuries or deaths caused during emergency response—except in cases of willful misconduct or gross negligence. The platforms gain federal contracting authority and liability immunity; states lose licensing control over out-of-state medical workers deployed in their jurisdictions.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core operative mechanism is a liability immunity grant to private health care platforms and independent contractors during emergencies, coupled with federal tort-claims coverage that shifts injury liability from private parties to the federal government (and ultimately taxpayers). The emergency-response framing is genuine, but the financial and legal benefit flows to private entities.
What the text implies
- Liability immunity applies to negligence (not just gross negligence) in practice, because the bill defines the exception narrowly and places burden of proof on injured parties to prove 'gross negligence' or 'willful misconduct'—a high bar in emergency chaos.
- Federal tort-claims status (28 USC § 171) means injury claims shift from private platforms to the federal government, reducing platform litigation costs and converting private liability into public/taxpayer liability.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
private health care workforce platforms (gig-economy medical staffing companies); independent contractor health care workers (reduced liability exposure); pharmaceutical and medical device companies (if platforms are subsidiaries or affiliates)