Democrats and Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are set to have a bipartisan meeting next Wednesday with Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as congressional tax writers eye year-end health care legislation following their work in helping craft the “big, beautiful bill.”
According to a notice of the meeting viewed by POLITICO, Ways and Means members are invited “to discuss the priorities” of CMS on July 23, including issues “involving health care matters” that fall within the jurisdiction of the panel.
Conversation could turn to what’s next for Ways and Means and its counterpart in the Senate, the Finance Committee, where Republicans are actively discussing interest in moving an overhaul to the operations of pharmaceutical benefit managers, the intermediaries who negotiate drug prices between pharmacies and manufacturers.
Discussion next week could also focus on the critical role Oz played in reassuring Senate Republicans that hospitals in their states could tap into a rural hospital relief fund amid steep cuts to Medicaid in the GOP megabill.
