A committee member asked the conference committee whether there was support for increasing a Medicare-related insurance payment rate to 400% from the bill’s current 250% floor, but the committee did not adopt any change.

An unnamed committee member posed the question, asking if there was "any appetite about increasing the Medicare insurance rate back to the original 400%" in the payment section of the bill. Another committee member replied, "I don't think it's a bad idea, but just at this point, I'd have a little hard time with it. Just the extra cost to insurance, I guess, would concern me. So I would prefer that we stay at the 250%." A separate committee speaker described 250% as the equilibrium reached during negotiations and warned that raising the floor would add cost.

Speakers also emphasized a payment change in the bill that they viewed favorably: shifting direct pay to ambulance services rather than routing payment through patients. One committee member said that change "was one of the biggest wins in that payment section." The transcript records no motion or vote on the proposed change to the Medicare rate, and the meeting adjourned without further action on the question.

The discussion was exploratory; no drafting directive or formal recommendation to change the percentage was recorded in the transcript.