Sponsor
Victoria Spartz
Representative · R-IN
Representative · R-IN
The bill substantially increases transparency about healthcare market concentration and licensure to better inform policy and protect consumers, but it requires federal resources and raises scrutiny and privacy/proprietary risks for providers.
Patients, payers, and state governments gain annual, standardized data on hospital and insurer/provider market concentration, helping policymakers and enforcers identify consolidation that can drive up prices or reduce access.
The public, researchers, and stakeholders get annual interactive, public datasets on health market structure, increasing transparency and enabling independent analysis of trends and policy impacts.
Healthcare workers and state licensing bodies receive a consistent dataset about licensure and training requirements that supports workforce planning and interstate policy coordination.
HHS and federal staff will need to conduct, maintain, and publish an annual 10‑year study, which may increase federal costs or divert agency staff and attention from other projects.
Hospitals, insurers, and other providers will face increased public scrutiny and potentially more regulatory enforcement or interventions based on published concentration metrics.
Releasing detailed market and licensure data to federal agencies and the public could raise state privacy or proprietary concerns and complicate data collection or sharing agreements.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires ASPE to conduct and publish an annual 10-year study of state health care market competition, consolidation, and related metrics, with interactive datasets for Congress and the public.
Official title: To direct the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct an annual study on health care competition and consolidation at the State level.
Introduced August 27, 2026 by Victoria Spartz · Last progress August 27, 2026
Requires HHS’s Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) to run an annual, 10-year study of competition and consolidation in state health care markets, working with the FTC and DOJ antitrust division. The study must collect data on licensing, mergers and acquisitions, certificates of public advantage and certificates of need, availability of alternative insurance products, provider counts, and market concentration measures, and publish an annual report and interactive datasets for Congress and the public.