Cassidy’s hepatitis C bill delayed over CBO score
Retiring health panel chairman has said the bill is a priority, but measure hasn't advanced
A bipartisan bill aimed at combating hepatitis C is stalled in the Senate due to a high score from the Congressional Budget Office, the bill’s lead sponsor Bill Cassidy, R-La., said on Thursday.
The bill, co-sponsored by Sen Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., proposes a national strategy to reduce hepatitis C infections by providing free medications and expanding testing for high-risk and vulnerable groups.
Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is a former liver doctor who spent much of his career treating the disease and has said getting this bill across the finish line is a priority before he leaves Congress in January. But the measure has not advanced since its introduction in June 2025, despite bipartisan interest.
“There was a score on it that was a disappointing score, but there’s at least some conversations taking place by some with the CBO to get that re-scored,” Cassidy said Thursday afternoon.
Cassidy’s office would not provide the exact figure for the bill’s estimated cost but did say it was higher than a related CBO estimate last Congress.
In 2024, the CBO estimated that a five-year program increasing the hepatitis C treatment rate among Medicaid beneficiaries to a peak of 100 percent would save approximately $7 billion over a decade due to reducing costs of treating people with complications from the disease, while it would increase spending on testing and treatment by $4 billion.
Van Hollen’s office also said discussions with CBO were ongoing and that Van Hollen was hopeful that the issue would be resolved.
Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, and Diana DeGette, D-Colo., introduced a similar bill in the House last month. But it does not include language in Cassidy and Van Hollen’s bill that would prevent unauthorized immigrants from accessing the medication under the program.
Hepatitis C is a deadly but curable disease, yet potentially hundreds of thousands of Americans remain untreated or don’t know they are infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
