Sponsors (21)
Requiring extended outyear estimates aims to encourage prevention-oriented policy by revealing long-term savings, but it trades off the risk of politicized or uncertain projections, increased CBO workload, and disputes over what counts as preventive care.
Patients and people with chronic conditions could get stronger policy support for preventive programs if documented long-term federal savings justify investment, improving access to prevention.
State policymakers would have better information about long-term budget impacts of preventive interventions, improving legislative decision-making on health and fiscal policy.
Taxpayers could benefit from lower long-term federal health spending if preventive-health provisions are shown to reduce disease-related costs over future decades.
Taxpayers and the federal budget process could be harmed if speculative or uncertain long-range savings estimates are politically leveraged or misused to justify legislation, skewing fiscal priorities.
Hospitals, health systems, and other stakeholders may face inconsistent or contested scoring because a broad definition of 'preventive health care' can invite disputes over what interventions qualify.
The Congressional Budget Office and federal employees could face increased workload and resource strain to prepare extended outyear projections, potentially delaying other analyses.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires CBO, on request from key committee leaders, to produce supplemental long-range budget projections estimating outlay reductions from preventive health care and explain the evidence and methods.
Official title: To amend the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 respecting the scoring of preventive health savings.
Introduced July 16, 2025 by Jay Obernolte · Last progress July 16, 2025
Directs the Congressional Budget Office to produce, when requested by leaders of relevant committees, supplemental long-range budget projections that estimate outlay reductions from preventive health care. It lets CBO extend its usual projection timeframe to include two consecutive 10-year "budgetary outyears" starting a decade ahead and requires that any estimate explain the evidence and methods used, while clarifying these estimates are supplementary and cannot be used for budget enforcement. Defines key terms: "budgetary outyears" as the two 10-year periods beginning 10 years after the current fiscal year, and "preventive health care" broadly to include public- and population-level interventions supported by credible epidemiological or clinical evidence. The change amends CBO authorities to prepare these supplementary projections on request from chairs and ranking members of the Budget Committee and the committee of primary jurisdiction in either House.