HR-1768 : Still Just a Bill

The Lower Costs for Everyday Americans Act, or H.R. 1768, is a multifaceted bill introduced in the House of Representatives on March 3, 2025, addressing various sectors with the goal of reducing costs for Americans. The bill has been referred to several committees including Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, the Budget, the Judiciary, and Education and the Workforce, indicating the breadth of its provisions. Here's a summary of the key areas addressed:

• Recycling, Water, and Environment: Aims to improve recycling and composting infrastructure, reduce diesel emissions, and ensure safe drinking water.
• Commerce:
  • Youth Poisoning Prevention: Bans consumer products with high concentrations of sodium nitrite.
  • Consumer Product Safety: Sets safety standards for batteries in light electric vehicles and personal e-mobility devices.
  • Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency: Requires the FCC to publish lists of entities with foreign ownership.
  • Supply Chains: Seeks to promote resilient supply chains for critical goods and technologies.
  • Technology: Promotes American blockchain technology, future networks (like 6G), and secures space-related licenses.
  • Consumer Protection: Addresses issues such as nonconsensual intimate visual depictions online, rural broadband protection, American music tourism, disclosure of camera capabilities in smart devices, semiconductor manufacturing, hotel fees, and ticket sales transparency.
  • Routers: Requires a study of national security risks posed by certain routers and modems.
  • NTIA Reauthorization: Reauthorizes the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and establishes Offices of Spectrum Management and International Affairs.
• Health:
  • Medicaid: Streamlines enrollment for out-of-state providers, adjusts coverage for home and community-based services, removes age restrictions for working adults with disabilities, and modifies disproportionate share hospital allotments.
  • Medicare: Extends payment adjustments for low-volume hospitals, the Medicare-dependent hospital program, ambulance service add-on payments, incentive payments for alternative payment models, and telehealth flexibilities. It also addresses program integrity, telehealth guidance for those with limited English proficiency, in-home cardiopulmonary rehabilitation, and medication-induced movement disorder outreach. It seeks to provide Medicare coverage for multi-cancer early detection screening tests and external infusion pumps.
  • Other Health Matters: Includes extensions for sexual risk avoidance education, personal responsibility education, and family-to-family health information centers.
  • Public Health: Extends community health center funding, special diabetes programs, and makes corrections to 9/11 responder health funding.
  • Support Act Reauthorization: Reauthorizes programs related to prenatal and postnatal health, overdose prevention, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, PDMP systems, first responder training, and suicide prevention.
  • Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Response: Focuses on state and local readiness, federal planning and coordination, addressing needs of all individuals, and additional reauthorizations related to public health emergencies.
  • Public Health Programs: Extends action for dental health, PREEMIE programs, efforts to prevent maternal deaths, sickle cell disease prevention and treatment, traumatic brain injuries, lifespan respite care, and healthcare provider protection programs.
  • Food and Drug Administration: Addresses research into pediatric uses of drugs, cooperation and security related to the Abraham Accords, and lowering prescription drug costs by providing oversight of pharmacy benefit management services.

Many provisions throughout the bill have funding attached.