Biden Signs Anti-Shutdown Bill With Some Medicare Funding Provisions

House members voted 366-34 for the ARA, 2025 package. All members who opposed the package were Republicans.

Senate members approved the package by an 85-11 vote. At press time, the party breakdown was not available.

Package details: The new spending package:

• Maintains current provisions that boost Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals.
• Maintains current provisions that boost Medicare reimbursement rates for ambulance services.
• Extends the current, temporary Medicare telehealth coverage rules, which are more flexible than the older Medicare telehealth coverage rules and were adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The package excludes Further Continuing Appropriations provisions that would:

• Require Medicare Advantage plans to review their provider directories more often and correct errors promptly.
• Move toward having Medicare cover Grail's Galleri blood test and other blood tests that screen people for many different kinds of cancer at the same time.
• Limit pharmacy benefit managers that serve Medicare prescription drug plans to collecting service fees and prohibit the PBMs from basing compensation on the value of discounts negotiated.
• Reauthorize the Older Americans Act.

Sen. Ron Wyden, R-Ore., said he was unhappy about provisions like the provider directory provision dropping out of the anti-shutdown package because of Trump's complaints.

The povider directory provision "goes after ghost networks that are blocking Americans from getting the care they need," Wyden said. "What these ghost networks are all about is, essentially, the insurance companies take your money, and then there aren't any providers, there aren't any navigators, there isn't anybody to help you get your coverage. So under what we are calling for in a bipartisan way, the insurance companies would have to have a list of doctors that actually are going to make care available, so Americans who need care can contact them, make an appointments, and not have to pay extra costs by going out of the health care network they paid for."

When plans fail to keep the provider directories current, "there is no there... there," Wyden said. "You paid your money, and you can't get access to real care. Either the doctors don't take new patients, nobody picks up the phone, you aren't able to get what you paid for."

The 119th Congress: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate votes that took place this morning were the last votes of the 118th Congress.

The 119th Congress starts Jan. 3.

Many provisions in the bigger Further Continuing Appropriations package appear to have broad, bipartisan support, and they could return in the 119th Congress, either as stand-alone bills or as part of new packages.

The looming spending negotiations in March could produce a new anti-shutdown package that might ferry some of the provisions left out of the American Relief Act to passage in the House and the Senate.

The White House. Credit: Matthew/Adobe Stock