Congressional Voices · Democrat · Texas TX-37 · Ranking Member, Ways & Means Health Subcommittee
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
U.S. House · The Saving MEDICARE Act · Introduced July 1, 2026 · Joined by 44 Colleagues
What He Did That No One Else Did
Other members named the Medicare Advantage overpayment problem. Doggett wrote the bill to end it. As Ranking Member of the Ways & Means Health Subcommittee — the panel with direct jurisdiction over Medicare — he assembled 44 colleagues and a coalition of aging and consumer groups behind a single comprehensive answer to the upcoding machine that Sen. Grassley and Rep. Jayapal had already documented in dollars. He is also the member who put his name in writing to two insurance CEOs on behalf of individual people: to UnitedHealth on Dr. Elisabeth Potter's behalf, and to the Attorney General alongside AOC.
Straight About the Scope
The Saving MEDICARE Act is an overpayment bill, not a wrongful-denial bill. It goes after how Medicare Advantage insurers extract too much money from taxpayers — through upcoding and favorable selection — not directly at how they deny care to individual patients. On its own, it would not have stopped the denial that cost a leg.
But it strikes the same engine. The upcoding that inflates an insurer's revenue and the denial that suppresses its costs are two hands of one business model. Public Citizen, endorsing the bill, named it plainly: these overpayment tactics come bundled with "delays and denials of necessary care." Cut the overpayment incentive and you weaken the machine that runs on both. That is why this belongs in the record — it points straight at the fraud pattern.
On July 1, 2026, Doggett — joined by 44 colleagues — introduced the Saving Medicare Enrollees from Deceptive Insurers and Creating Ample Resources for Everyone (Saving MEDICARE) Act. The bill takes aim at the many ways Medicare AdvantageMedicare AdvantageThe private-insurer alternative to Traditional Medicare (Part C). Plans are paid a fixed, risk-adjusted amount per enrollee — which rewards documenting more diagnoses (upcoding), the central source of overpayment. insurers are overpaid, with the stated goal of leveling the field so Traditional Medicare is no longer at a disadvantage to giant private insurers.
The nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) estimates Medicare Advantage will cost $2,660 more per enrollee in 2026 than Traditional Medicare. Insurers secure that extra money largely through upcoding — making patients look sicker on paper via chart reviews and health-risk assessments — and favorable selection, steering healthy people into MA and sicker patients into Traditional Medicare.
On the Record · July 1, 2026
"Despite their early claims of greater efficiency and lower costs, Medicare Advantage has never saved a penny. It actually costs taxpayers more each year while offering consumers less. This unjustified, costly advantage private Medicare Advantage insurers receive must be ended…"
— Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Ranking Member, Ways & Means Health Subcommittee
This is the legislative answer to what the oversight letters only exposed. Sen. Grassley documented $8.7 billion in upcoding overpayments in a single year; Rep. Jayapal's 29-member amicus brief documented $2.1 billion the insurer knew was wrong and left uncorrected. Doggett's bill is the machinery to stop it at the source.
The $2.5 Trillion Number
Public Citizen warns the country is "on course to waste more than $2.5 trillion over the next decade in overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans." An independent 10-year savings estimate from Brown University's Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research (CAHPR) puts the same figure — roughly $2.5 trillion — on what the Act would save.
What the Act Would Do
- End upcoding — exclude diagnosis codes pulled from chart reviews and health-risk assessments; require CMS to review and cull abuse-prone codes annually.
- Kill the incentives — ban percentage-of-premium contracts that pay providers to add diagnoses.
- Fix the benchmarks — add a favorable-selection payment adjustment; eliminate the county quartile system.
- Stop frivolous payments — end the failed Quality Bonus Program; let the VA recover costs from MA plans for dually-enrolled veterans.
- Tighten oversight — set deadlines for RADV audits; let state insurance commissioners share enforcement authority with CMS.
Who Stands Behind It
Endorsers include Public Citizen, Families USA, the Center for Medicare Advocacy, the Medicare Rights Center, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, Justice in Aging, the Center for Health and Democracy, Social Security Works, and Healthcare NOW. Original cosponsors include Reps. Jayapal, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, DeLauro, Casar, Khanna, Schakowsky, and Tlaib, among 44 in all.
Why this matters for the AbilityForge record:
Across this site, the Medicare Advantage upcoding fraud has been documented as harm — Grassley's $8.7B, Jayapal's $2.1B, the DOJ's United States v. UnitedHealth Group case. What was missing was the fix. The Saving MEDICARE Act is the first comprehensive legislative attempt to drain the overpayment pool that funds the whole apparatus. It does not, by itself, protect a single patient from a wrongful denial — but it attacks the profit motive that makes denial pay.
Two More Times He Put His Name on the Line
The Letter to UnitedHealth's CEO — for Dr. Potter
After Dr. Elisabeth Potter recorded a prior-authorization call and refused UnitedHealth's cease-and-desist, Doggett wrote directly to Chairman & CEO Stephen Hemsley on her behalf — six days after Hemsley testified before Ways & Means — with a hard response deadline of February 22. See Dr. Potter's case →
The Letter to AG Bondi — with AOC
After The Guardian's investigation into UnitedHealth's nursing-home programs, Doggett co-signed a letter with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez urging the DOJ to "thoroughly review new revelations" of "potential waste, fraud, and abuse." Read about the AOC/Doggett letter →
Tell Them AbilityForge Sent You
This member is on record moving legislation against Medicare Advantage overpayment fraud. Contact his office to express appreciation and urge continued oversight of insurer upcoding and denials. Every constituent call is part of the record.
Sources
- Office of Rep. Lloyd Doggett — "Democrats Introduce Saving MEDICARE Act to Stop Insurers' Profiteering Off Medicare," July 1, 2026
- Bill text, fact sheet, and the Brown University CAHPR 10-year savings estimate are linked within the press release above.
- MedPAC per-enrollee cost estimate and endorsing-organization list per the same release.
Other Members in This Series