There is “significant uncertainty” around the effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Tenet Chairman and CEO Saum Sutaria, MD, said on the Dallas-based system’s July 22 earnings call.
“A lot of the impacts have been pushed out pretty far, into the very, very end of ’27, or really, ’28,” he said. “We really don’t have any insight into how this will be implemented. There are new legislative proposals that have already come up attempting to rescind parts of the OBBB, which are in play in Congress.”
Dr. Sutaria said Tenet’s legislative and lobbying priorities revolve around extending the enhanced ACA subsidies. He said the most important area for the healthcare industry, the insurance industry, as well as small businesses, is “engaging in dialogue about mechanisms to extend the exchange subsidies.”
Dr. Sutaria said the exchanges were a critical safety net for individuals who need health insurance to have a landing spot, and it created what he considered a “pretty smooth (Medicaid) redetermination process because of the availability of those insurance options for individuals and families that needed it.”
“That in addition to the fact that the exchanges represent critical support for small businesses that are unable to provide broad-based insurance coverage options to their employees, which supports, obviously, a very large part of the economy, represents the two most important prongs of the conversation around why it’s important to extend these subsidies.”
Despite longer-term questions regarding the effects of the budget bill, Tenet raised its 2025 outlook after posting an operating income of $832 million (15.6% operating margin) and a net income of $288 million in the second quarter. The system is now projecting an adjusted net income of $1.12 billion to $1.22 billion in 2025, up from the previous estimate of $1 billion to $1.2 billion.
