Sponsors (2)
The bill invests heavily to expand and better‑fund residency training, steer slots toward primary care and psychiatry, and recruit clinicians to rural areas—improving future access to care—but does so at substantial federal cost and with implementation, equity, and incentive risks that could limit how benefits are distributed and sustained.
Hospitals and teaching sites will be able to add up to 50,220 new Medicare‑supported residency positions nationwide between 2027–2036, expanding physician training capacity and increasing the future supply of doctors.
Teaching health centers and residency programs (including hospitals) will receive larger, more predictable per‑resident payments and increased federal authorization over time, improving funding stability for graduate medical education and making program expansion more financially viable.
A significant share of new residency slots will target primary care (at least 30%) and psychiatry (at least 15%), directing workforce growth toward primary care and mental‑health needs.
The bill substantially increases federal spending across multiple authorizations (teaching center payments, Medicare residency payments, relocation grants, and school grants), raising budgetary pressure on taxpayers and requiring appropriations or offsets.
Greater per‑resident minimums and increased authorizations could force trade‑offs or diversion of HHS discretionary dollars and appropriated funds, potentially crowding out other programs or delaying priorities.
Because many expansions must be attached to existing programs (and some grant details are unspecified), the measures may not meaningfully redistribute capacity to areas with no current residency programs, leaving some rural or underserved areas still underserved.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Introduced September 30, 2025 by Bernard Sanders · Last progress September 30, 2025
Creates new federal authorities and funding to expand the health care workforce. It adds grant program slots for medical, dental, and nursing schools (text inserts provided but program details not listed), raises and sets multiyear per‑resident payment floors and annual funding levels for qualified teaching health centers starting in FY2026, authorizes distribution of 50,220 additional Medicare residency FTE slots nationwide for FY2027–2036 with specific psychiatry and primary care quotas, and establishes a rural relocation grant program that pays up to $20,000 per clinician (with partial repayment if service is cut short) and is funded through FY2035. The bill mainly changes higher education and public health statutes to increase training capacity and incentives for clinicians to practice in underserved and rural areas, specifies year-by-year dollar authorizations for teaching health centers, and prescribes implementation rules and timing for expanding Medicare resident caps and IME calculations.