12 Top Spring Medicare Bills

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The 118th Congress is now off and running, and lawmakers seem to be using introducing bipartisan Medicare bills as a team-building exercise.

Many Medicare bill sponsors have attracted co-sponsors from the other side of the aisle.

For a list of what look to us to be the 12 Medicare bills the have the strongest support now, see the gallery above.

Methods

We compiled the list by looking for bills that could have a direct effect on Medicare and have a relatively large, bipartisan list of sponsors and co-sponsors.

All of the bills are still in committee. At press time, none had been the subject of a hearing.

The Senate has 100 members, and the House has 435 members. For the sake of ranking bills, we counted the support of a senator as being worth the support of four representatives.

Bills with bipartisan “companion” bills in the other chamber are placed higher than bills with no companions.

What It Means

Some of the could sail through Congress using special rules meant for especially popular legislation.

In other cases, drafters of “must pass” spending packages could win support by adding some of these bills to the text.

Some of the bills could be of interest to life and annuity specialists, or even to pure investment advisors, as well as to financial professionals who help clients with their Medicare coverage.

When centrists are trying to raise the federal debt limit, or get basic federal government spending authorizations, they may need support from the backers of the bipartisan Medicare bills to pass the measures that keep the lights on.

(Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

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