Rep. Martin Carbaugh (R-Fort Wayne) addresses the media during the unveiling of the Indiana House Republican 2025 agenda on Jan. 14, 2025. Rep. Brad Barrett (R-Richmond) stands in the background.
(Brandon Smith/IPB News)
The Indiana House GOP’s 2025 legislative priorities hope to build on previous initiatives that aimed to bring down health care and housing costs.
House Republicans unveiled their agenda Tuesday.
Rep. Martin Carbaugh’s (R-Fort Wayne) legislation, HB 1004, would examine what nonprofit hospitals are charging for services compared to the Medicare reimbursement rate.
“If you’re charging over a certain level — we have a starting point in the bill — are you really a not-for-profit hospital anymore, or are you a for-profit hospital?” Carbaugh said.
The measure would revoke nonprofit status for hospitals charging more than 200 percent of the Medicare reimbursement rate.
That bill couples with Rep. Brad Barrett’s (R-Richmond) HB 1003, which aims to build on the legislature’s previous measures on health care price transparency.
“Some of the measures that we’ve done to lower costs, we’re trying to ensure that those savings actually get passed onto the patient,” Barrett said.
Some of the provisions in Barrett’s expansive bill include tighter controls over prior authorization by health insurers and a stricter timeline for good faith estimates of the cost of health care procedures.
On housing, Rep. Doug Miller’s (R-Elkhart) bill, HB 1005, would put more money into a previously-created housing infrastructure loan fund for local governments.
“And it also encourages our communities to work with housing providers to meet needs across the state,” Miller said.
The legislation would prioritize loans for communities focused on policies like multifamily and higher density housing.
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Rep. Chris Jeter (R-Fishers) said his HB 1006 would make a “once-in-a-generation investment” in the criminal justice system.
The bill would create a public prosecution fund that would reimburse counties for up to 50 percent of the cost of their deputy prosecutors’ salaries and benefits.
The legislation would also increase the reimbursement rate counties receive for their public defenders, which Jeter said are an important part of the justice system.
“We’ve worked really hard over the years to maintain parity between the prosecutors and the defense attorneys and this bill will try to maintain that,” Jeter said.
Also on the House GOP’s priority list this session: HB 1008, authored by House Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers), which would create a joint commission with Illinois to explore annexing counties that seek to secede from Indiana’s western neighbor.
Such action would require legislation by both Indiana and Illinois and likely require Congressional approval, making it unlikely to happen in the near future.
