Medicare expands comfort care for seriously ill patients, 24/7 access nationwide
S. 1935 — Expanding Access to Palliative Care Act · Filed by Jacky Rosen (D-NV) · 4 cosponsors · Introduced Jun 3, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill creates a new Medicare program to provide community-based palliative care (comfort-focused medical care for people with serious illnesses) to eligible beneficiaries, replacing the existing Medicare Care Choices Model. The program will be tested for 5 years, serving Medicare beneficiaries with serious conditions like cancer, heart disease, dementia, and others, delivered by teams that include hospice-certified providers working alongside primary care doctors. Care is available 24/7 in homes, facilities, or community settings, and includes pain management, symptom relief, advance care planning, mental health support, and family counseling—with no exclusion for people who previously used hospice benefits.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is a Medicare demonstration project expanding access to palliative care services for seriously ill beneficiaries. It is a straightforward public-health measure designed to improve outcomes and reduce unnecessary acute care utilization.
What the text implies
- The program's success in reducing emergency department visits and hospitalizations could shift care delivery patterns away from acute-care settings, potentially affecting hospital revenue models and emergency department utilization rates.
- By explicitly including providers 'associated with a hospice program' as eligible participants, the bill may create new revenue streams for hospice organizations through palliative care services delivered outside the traditional hospice benefit structure.
- The 24/7 access requirement and team-based approach may increase demand for palliative care specialists and hospice-certified providers, potentially creating workforce shortages in underserved areas despite the bill's equity focus.
- Removal of the prior-hospice-use exclusion allows beneficiaries to receive palliative care services after or concurrent with hospice, potentially creating overlapping service delivery and billing complexity.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill expands access to palliative care services for seriously ill Medicare beneficiaries, improving quality of life and care coordination while reducing unnecessary emergency visits and hospitalizations. The program explicitly includes rural and underserved populations, removes barriers to enrollment (no prior-hospice exclusion), and mandates 24/7 access, making comfort-focused care more available to vulnerable populations who currently lack it.
Who stands to gain
- hospice organizations and palliative care providers
- home health agencies
- integrated health systems and hospitals offering palliative care
- mental health and spiritual care service providers
Named in the bill
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMI), Medicare, Social Security Act Section 1115A, Medicare Care Choices Model, hospice programs, palliative care teams
Where it stands
4 cosponsors: 2 Democrats, 2 Republicans.
- Jun 3, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jun 3, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Finance · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
7 lobbying clients named this bill on 13 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $2,260,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 15 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 86% of bills with at least one filing.
Jacky Rosen, the sponsor, reported $207,550 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Trinity Health — $720,000 on 3 filings
- National Alliance for Care at Home (formerly Natl Assn for Home Care & Hospice) — $610,000 on 1 filing
- American College of Surgeons — $440,000 on 2 filings
- Vitas Healthcare Corporation — $230,000 on 1 filing
- The National Alliance for Care at Home — $100,000 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (4,796 characters) on Jul 25, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; 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.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 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 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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