Sponsors
The bill substantially increases public, county‑level and Part A/Part B Medicare spending transparency—helping beneficiaries, researchers, providers, and taxpayers better understand and potentially curb inefficient spending—but it raises nontrivial privacy risks, administrative costs, and risks of misinterpretation or dispute that must be managed.
Medicare beneficiaries nationwide will get much more detailed, county/MSA- and Part A/Part B–level information on Medicare spending (historical back to 2015 and annually thereafter), helping them understand how dollars are spent.
Taxpayers and policymakers gain better ability to spot Medicare Advantage (MA) overpayments or other inefficiencies—supporting potential cost-saving policy changes and oversight.
Hospitals, state and local health planners will be able to target resources and refine payment analyses using detailed expenditure and enrollment breakdowns by beneficiary categories and geography.
Medicare beneficiaries—especially those in small counties or small enrollment subgroups—face increased risk of re-identification and privacy harms from publication of granular, location- and category-level data.
CMS, HHS, the Trustees, and oversight bodies (e.g., MedPAC) will incur additional administrative, IT, analytic, and publication costs to compile, validate, protect, and respond to this expanded dataset, likely paid from program or federal resources.
Public release of granular spending and enrollment data could be misinterpreted or used out of context, harming the reputations of providers or regions and prompting inappropriate policy responses or local backlash.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Requires CMS, MedPAC, and the Medicare trustees to publish detailed county/MSA-level Medicare enrollment/expenditure data and annual MA vs. fee-for-service spending comparisons beginning in 2027.
Introduced February 11, 2026 by Tim Scott · Last progress February 11, 2026
Requires the Department of Health and Human Services (through CMS) to publish machine-readable, county- and MSA-level Medicare enrollment and expenditure data starting in 2027, with historical enrollment back to 2015 and monthly Parts A/B expenditure series over a 10-year historical window plus up to 5 years of Secretary-specified projections. Directs MedPAC to publish an annual retrospective comparison of average spending for Medicare Advantage enrollees versus comparable fee-for-service beneficiaries, with public methodology review and data sufficient to replicate results (while protecting confidentiality). Requires the Medicare trustees to report aggregated and average Title XVIII expenditures for three mutually exclusive beneficiary groups beginning with 2027 reports and to disaggregate Part A and Part B spending for the non-MA group when practicable.