H.R. 7961: The “Physicians” Bill That Exempts More Than Physicians

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Bill: H.R. 7961, the H–1Bs for Physicians and the Healthcare Workforce Act Introduced: March 17, 2026 Sponsors: Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), with Reps. Sanford Bishop (D-GA), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) Status: Referred to the House Judiciary Committee

What the bill does

Last September, the Trump administration issued a proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions. H.R. 7961 carves out an exception: it says that fee — and any future fee beyond the existing statutory H-1B fee — will not apply to anyone in the “health care workforce.”

On its face, that sounds narrow. The bill’s title is all about physicians, and every press release and medical-association endorsement frames it as a fix for a “physician shortage.” The American Medical Association, the AAMC, the American College of Radiology, and a coalition of more than 40 medical and patient-advocacy groups have all signed on.

The part that isn’t getting attention

The bill doesn’t define “health care workforce” itself — it borrows the definition from 42 U.S.C. 294q, a provision of the Affordable Care Act’s health workforce title. That definition is written to cover the health workforce broadly, not just physicians: it reaches well beyond doctors into a wide range of allied health and health-services occupations covered under the ACA’s workforce development programs.

In other words, a bill sold as narrowly targeted relief for physician shortages is drafted to exempt a much larger category of the health care labor market from the fee. Nothing in the bill text limits the exemption to physicians, to specialties in documented shortage, or to any particular region. If it passes as written, the $100,000 fee simply stops applying to a large slice of an entire sector.

What the bill doesn’t do

It’s worth being clear about what H.R. 7961 does not touch:

  • No cap. It doesn’t limit how many H-1B petitions health care employers can file under the exemption.
  • No wage test beyond existing law. It doesn’t add any new prevailing-wage or displacement safeguard specific to health care.
  • No geographic targeting. Supporters lean heavily on the rural-hospital argument, but the exemption isn’t limited to rural or underserved facilities — it applies to any qualifying employer anywhere.

The $100,000 fee was, whatever else you think of it, one of the only real cost disincentives against employers defaulting to the H-1B pipeline instead of raising wages or recruiting domestically. This bill removes that disincentive for an entire industry, based on a “shortage” claim that — as with H-1B shortage claims in tech — deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets. Health care staffing gaps in specific rural counties are real, but “shortage” is also a durable talking point regardless of local labor-market conditions, and a supply-side visa fix doesn’t distinguish between a genuine local shortfall and an employer preference for lower-cost foreign labor.

Why this matters beyond health care

If Congress grants a broad sector-wide carve-out here, it hands every other industry lobbying against the $100,000 fee a template: get your trade association to write a “critical shortage” narrative, find a friendly bipartisan sponsor, and ask for the same treatment. Tech and engineering employers have made an identical shortage argument for years. There’s no principled reason, once one sector gets an exemption defined this broadly, that others don’t follow.

Where it stands

As of mid-April 2026, the bill had picked up roughly two dozen cosponsors and is still sitting in the House Judiciary Committee with no scheduled markup. It has bipartisan sponsorship and a well-organized coalition of medical associations pushing it, which is usually a sign a bill has real momentum even without floor action yet.

We’ll keep tracking it here as it moves.

Sources: bill text via Congress.gov; AAMC, AMA, ACR, and NARHC advocacy statements on H.R. 7961.