Congress creates health care advisory panel—but industry gets a seat at the table
S. 1911 — HEALTH Panel Act · Filed by Pete Ricketts (R-NE) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced May 22, 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 creates a 15-member Panel of Health Advisors within the Congressional Budget Office to provide technical expertise and recommendations on health care policy analysis, cost estimates, and economic modeling. The panel will be appointed by House and Senate budget committee leaders and the CBO director, meet annually, and publish reports on how their recommendations are used in official CBO health care analyses.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core function is to establish an advisory panel that strengthens the Congressional Budget Office's capacity to analyze health care policy. It is a governance and transparency measure, not a substantive health policy change.
What the text implies
- Panel composition (15 members with staggered 3-year terms) may create institutional inertia; turnover is slow, potentially limiting responsiveness to new health care challenges or shifting political priorities.
- Membership qualifications explicitly include 'investment in health care companies' — this may create perception of industry influence on CBO health care scoring, even if conflict-of-interest disclosures are required.
- Annual reporting requirement and public website publication may increase political pressure on CBO to justify cost estimates, potentially affecting the office's analytical independence.
- Panel recommendations require 9-member supermajority approval before inclusion in reports, which may suppress minority expert views and reduce diversity of analytical perspectives.
Who it affects
The panel improves the transparency and quality of congressional budget analysis on health care by bringing diverse expert perspectives into CBO cost-estimation processes. Better health policy analysis benefits ordinary citizens by enabling more informed legislative decisions on Medicare, Medicaid, insurance, and drug pricing.
Who stands to gain
- health insurance companies
- pharmaceutical companies
- health care facility operators
- health care investment firms
Named in the bill
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), House Committee on the Budget, Senate Committee on the Budget, Panel of Health Advisors, Medicare, Medicaid, Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974
Where it stands
1 cosponsor: 1 Republicans.
- May 22, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- May 22, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on the Budget · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Budget”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the full bill text on Jun 10, 2026; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 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.
As of — page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress creates health care advisory panel—but industry gets a seat at the table” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s1911 Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.