Summary

Requires hospitals that participate in Medicare (including critical access and rural emergency hospitals) to add a question about patient citizenship/national status to intake forms and to report annually how many non‑citizen/non‑national patients they treated and the dollar value of uncompensated care for those patients. The Health and Human Services Secretary must publish an annual public aggregate report estimating prior‑year uncompensated care for non‑citizens and the federal Medicare and Medicaid spending that would not have occurred without that uncompensated care. Intake collection begins 180 days after enactment; facility reporting and the first HHS aggregate report are due within one year and recur annually.

Key Points

• Medicare‑participating hospitals must collect patient citizenship/national status on intake forms starting 180 days after enactment.
• Hospitals must annually report counts of non‑citizen/non‑national patients and the dollar value of uncompensated care for those patients to HHS.
• The HHS Secretary must publish an annual public report aggregating facility submissions and estimating related federal Medicare and Medicaid spending.
• Reporting begins no later than 1 year after enactment and recurs annually; the first HHS aggregate report is due within one year.
• The bill does not change eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid benefits or provide additional funding for hospitals to comply.
• Imposes new administrative burdens on hospitals and may raise patient privacy and data‑use concerns.
• HHS estimates of federal spending tied to uncompensated care could be used to inform future policy decisions.
• No emergency designation, appropriations, tax changes, or explicit enforcement/immigration actions are included.
• Likely to affect hospitals' intake workflows and non‑citizen patients' willingness to seek care.

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