HR7537-119

In Committee

Corporate Crimes Against Health Care Act

119th Congress Introduced Feb 12, 2026

Summary

What This Bill Does

This bill targets health care ownership and financing practices. It creates a criminal offense for covered parties whose actions contribute to a triggering event causing patient death or injury at a target firm, with 1 to 6 years imprisonment, civil penalties up to 5 times clawback amounts, and clawbacks of covered compensation received during the 10 years before or after the triggering event. The Attorney General and state attorneys general can enforce clawbacks. It excludes entities that sell assets to or newly pledge assets as collateral for loans with real estate investment trusts from federal health care program participation, repeals special REIT rules for taxable REIT subsidiaries with qualified health care property, removes qualified REIT dividends from qualified business income treatment, requires annual health-related ownership reports beginning January 1, 2027, and requires HHS OIG to study profit-driven practices and moral injury in health care.

Who Benefits and How

Patients, health care workers, state attorneys general, the Department of Justice, HHS, CMS, and the public benefit from penalties, clawback authority, federal payment exclusions, ownership transparency, and a federal study of practices such as overbilling, upcoding, staffing cuts, revenue-focused compensation, service mix changes, and moral injury.

Who Bears the Burden and How

Covered health care owners, executives, investors, target firms, REITs with health care property, specified health-related entities, and health care management firms face criminal exposure, civil penalties, compensation clawbacks, federal program exclusion risk, reduced tax benefits, and annual ownership reporting. DOJ, state attorneys general, HHS, CMS, Treasury, IRS, and HHS OIG must enforce, administer, publish data, and report.

Key Provisions

  • Creates criminal penalties of 1 to 6 years for covered parties whose actions contribute to patient death or injury at a target firm.
  • Authorizes DOJ and state attorneys general to claw back covered compensation from covered parties for the 10 years before or after a triggering event.
  • Bars federal health care program payments to entities that sell assets to or newly pledge assets as collateral for loans with a REIT.
  • Repeals health-care-property REIT tax rules and removes qualified REIT dividends from qualified business income treatment.
  • Requires annual health-related ownership reports on mergers, acquisitions, control changes, affiliations, management services agreements, and ownership structures.
  • Directs HHS OIG to study profit-driven health care practices and report to Congress on moral injury and care-delivery effects.

Evidence Chain:

This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.

At a Glance

What This Bill Does

Creates criminal, civil, tax, payment-exclusion, ownership-reporting, and HHS OIG study tools aimed at health care corporate transactions and profit-driven practices that contribute to patient death, injury, or care harms.

Key Policy Areas

Healthcare, Financial Services, Tax, Law Enforcement

Primary Purpose

Creates criminal, civil, tax, payment-exclusion, ownership-reporting, and HHS OIG study tools aimed at health care corporate transactions and profit-driven practices that contribute to patient death, injury, or care harms.

Policy Domains

Healthcare Financial Services Tax Law Enforcement

Substantive provisions

Identified Gains
  • Patients of target health care firms
  • Health care workers
  • Department of Justice
  • State attorneys general
  • CMS
  • HHS Office of Inspector General
Model: codex-gpt-5 | Version: bill_summary_v2 | Source: ih
CMS: , , , , ,
Health care workers: , , , , ,
Department of Justice: , , , , ,
State attorneys general: , , , , ,
HHS Office of Inspector General: , , , , ,
Patients of target health care firms: , , , , ,
Identified Costs
  • Covered health care owners
  • Health care executives
  • Real estate investment trusts
  • Specified health-related entities
  • Internal Revenue Service
  • Department of Health and Human Services
Model: codex-gpt-5 | Version: bill_summary_v2 | Source: ih
Health care executives: , , , , ,
Internal Revenue Service: , , , , ,
Covered health care owners: , , , , ,
Real estate investment trusts: , , , , ,
Specified health-related entities: , , , , ,
Department of Health and Human Services: , , , , ,

Legislative Progress

In Committee
Introduced Committee Passed
Feb 12, 2026

Referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, and in …

Feb 12, 2026

Introduced in House

Feb 12, 2026

Ms. Goodlander introduced the following bill; which was referred to …

Stakeholder Effects

cui bono?

How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.

Healthcare
16 mentions across 9 clauses
+6 positive -9 negative ?1 uncertain

Covered health care owners, Health care management firms, Health care providers selling assets to REITs

Positive-direction: Health care workers, Patients affected by profit-driven practices, Patients of reporting entities, Patients of target health care firms

Negative-direction: Covered health care owners, Health care management firms, Health care providers selling assets to REITs, Specified health-related entities

Government
10 mentions across 7 clauses
+3 positive -7 negative

Congressional health committees, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice

Positive-direction: Congressional health committees, State attorneys general

Negative-direction: Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice, HHS Office of Inspector General

Real Estate
4 mentions across 3 clauses
-4 negative

Health care REIT subsidiaries, Real estate investment trusts

Taxpayers
3 mentions across 3 clauses
+1 positive -2 negative

Internal Revenue Service, Taxpayers

Positive-direction: Taxpayers

Negative-direction: Internal Revenue Service

Healthcare Beneficiaries
2 mentions across 2 clauses
-2 negative

CMS

Research & Science
1 mention across 1 clause
+1 positive

Public health researchers

Financial Services
1 mention across 1 clause
-1 negative

REIT shareholders

12/12
sections analyzed
Full impact breakdown

Bill Structure & Actor Mappings

Who is "The Secretary" in each section?

Domains
Healthcare Financial Services Tax Law Enforcement
Actor Mappings
"secretary"
→ Secretary of Health and Human Services
"attorney_general"
→ Attorney General of the United States

We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.

Learn more about our methodology