AAMC Raises Concerns as Ways and Means Passes Hospital Transparency Bill

The AAMC submitted a statement for the record (PDF) to the House Ways and Means Committee ahead of its July 1 markup of the Tax Exempt Hospital Transparency Act (H.R. 9504), raising significant concerns about the bill’s extensive new reporting mandates on tax-exempt hospitals. The committee advanced H.R. 9504 on a 25-15 vote as part of a broader July 1 tax administration markup. 

The statement expressed the AAMC’s support for transparency but detailed how H.R. 9504 would duplicate existing reporting requirements, disproportionately burden academic health systems and teaching hospitals, and would likely increase costs rather than lower them by imposing significant new compliance and administrative costs on hospitals already under financial strain. The AAMC’s statement flagged that virtually all AAMC-member institutions would be subject to the bill’s most demanding reporting tier by virtue of exceeding the size and revenue thresholds, with no recognition or consideration of the unique financial and operational complexity of academic medicine. The AAMC also raised concerns about the bill’s 340B reporting requirements, warning they would present an incomplete and misleading picture of the program by focusing narrowly on revenues without capturing how hospitals use 340B savings to support charity care, critical service lines, and programs addressing nonclinical drivers of health. 

Following the vote, the AAMC issued a press statement expressing disappointment with the committee’s passage of the bill and called on policymakers to instead pursue targeted revisions to Schedule H (IRS Form 990), as a more appropriate and less burdensome path toward improved transparency.