On Dec. 19, congressional leaders released, and the House of Representatives failed to advance, the American Relief Act, 2025 (H.R. 10515, PDF) after failing to advance a more comprehensive year-end package on Dec. 17. At the time of publication, Congress has yet to pass legislation to extend government funding before government funding expires. The American Relief Act, 2025, a continuing resolution, would have extended funding temporarily for all 12 spending bills — including the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill — through March 14, 2025, and included short-term extensions of a number of expiring health care provisions.
The package included a limited number of significant health care and public health provisions of interest to academic medicine, including a short-term extension of key COVID-era telehealth flexibilities and the Acute Hospital Care at Home Program, temporarily delaying scheduled reductions to the Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) program until April 1, 2025. The bill also included short-term extensions of key health care workforce programs, including the National Health Service Corps and the Teaching Health Centers Graduate Medical Education Program, and some pandemic preparedness programs.
Notably, the bill did not include other health care provisions included in the original package released by House leadership on Dec. 17, such as a partial mitigation of cuts to the Physician Fee Schedule, additional transparency requirements for pharmacy benefit managers, or an AAMC-opposed policy requiring the use of National Provider Identifier at hospital outpatient departments. Also excluded from the package was a provision of the AAMC-supported (PDF) Save Our Safety-Net Hospitals Act (H.R. 9351), which would have allowed hospitals to count costs and reimbursements associated with Medicare-Medicaid dual eligible individuals towards their Medicaid DSH cap.