"I still have hope," said Peggy Tighe, legislative counsel for the Regulatory Relief Coalition, a group of physician specialty organizations advocating for regulatory burden reduction in Medicare, when she was asked about the Improving Seniors' Timely Access to Care Act, which was approved last week by the House Ways & Means Health Subcommittee.
The measure, which seeks more transparency and accountability from Medicare Advantage plans on their prior authorization decisions, must still be approved by the full Ways & Means and House Energy & Commerce committees before it hits the House floor for a vote.
"What's different this year is that there is much more limited committee time and House floor time because of the ... drama on the House floor and the paucity of votes," Tighe said in a phone interview with MedPage Today. "So with everything else going on, I still have hope that we could pass this bill out of Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means before the August recess, but every day that Congress gets canceled, it makes it more difficult to find that time to accomplish what I think should be a very easy goal of passing legislation that is zero cost and widely supported."
This version of the bill, which was introduced in May 2025 by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Fla.), currently has 296 House cosponsors, including 167 Democrats and 129 Republicans. A companion bill in the Senate that was introduced by Sen. Roger Marshall, MD (R-Kansas), has 70 cosponsors -- 37 Democrats, 32 Republicans, and one Independent.
