Medicare changes how it pays for surgery centers starting in 2027.
S. 4963 — Outpatient Surgery Access Act of 2026 · Filed by Bill Cassidy (R-LA) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Jul 14, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
The bill changes Medicare pay for centers that do same-day surgery. Starting in 2027, these centers get the same yearly pay raise as hospitals. The bill stops Medicare from making separate pay cuts for these centers. It combines patient numbers from both types of places when figuring pay changes.
Who it affects
Surgery centers may expand and do more procedures. Patients might wait less time and pay less out of pocket. Medicare spending on same-day surgery may grow faster.
One thing to notice
Surgery centers will no longer have pay cuts that offset their raises. Medicare will spend more money without cuts elsewhere to balance it.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
1 cosponsor: 1 Democrats.
- Jul 14, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jul 14, 2026 — 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
1 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 1 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $60,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 4 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 0% of bills with any report.
Bill Cassidy, who sponsored the bill, received $1,385,254 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Ambulatory Surgery Center Association — $60,000 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- surgery centers — Places where patients have surgery and go home the same day.
- pay cuts — Reductions in the money a provider gets paid.
- Medicare — The federal health plan for people age 65 and older.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,679 characters) on Aug 12, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,707 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 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-23.
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