Medicare contractors pay legal fees for wrongful DME denials.
S. 5062 — FAIR DME Appeals Act · Filed by Bill Cassidy (R-LA) · Introduced Jul 22, 2026 · 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
The bill requires Medicare contractors to pay legal costs. Small durable medical equipment suppliers must win appeals first. Suppliers must prove the denial was clearly wrong or had no evidence. The supplier has 30 days after winning to apply. A judge decides the amount within 60 days.
Who it affects
Small durable medical equipment suppliers can recover legal costs. Medicare contractors must pay those costs when they lose appeals.
One thing to notice
The bill only covers denials that are clearly wrong. It does not cover denials based on missing paperwork or billing mistakes. Those are the most common reasons for denials.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
- Jul 22, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jul 22, 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.
Words to know
- durable medical equipment — Medical devices and supplies that help people with disabilities or illnesses.
- Medicare contractors — Companies that process payments and check claims for Medicare.
- appeal — A formal request to review a decision and ask for a different outcome.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (8,532 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.
As of — page rendered 2026-09-23.
“Medicare contractors pay legal fees for wrongful DME denials.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s5062/simple Report an error