Congress Funds Lung Imaging AI for Vets

Congress just wrote a $25M check for lung imaging AI. Read that again. 🫁

I sat with that number for a while. Not a research grant. Not a pilot buried in an omnibus. A direct, line-item appropriation for a defined category of FDA-cleared imaging software.

The consensus right now is that radiology AI has a reimbursement problem. The standard playbook says: get FDA cleared, then fight for a CMS payment code, then wait for utilization to catch up. That fight takes years. Most companies run out of runway before the code lands.

Here is my read: H.R. 9666 just opened a third door. And almost no one is talking about it.

📋 What the bill actually does

On July 14, 2026, Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) and Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) introduced the Advanced Imaging for Respiratory Care, Assessment and Research Excellence for Vets Act, the AIR CARE for Vets Act. According to xAID, Congress authorized $5 million per year for fiscal years 2027 through 2031, $25 million total, directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to run a five-year pilot that leases a “four-dimensional functional lung imaging software product that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to evaluate lung function” for veterans receiving care at VA facilities. The VA Secretary is required to report the pilot’s effectiveness back to Congress.

The bill’s language points to a product category, not a single vendor. 4DMedical’s CT LVAS, which received FDA clearance in November 2023, currently fits that category. CT LVAS analyzes an existing CT scan and overlays color-coded, quantified regional ventilation data on top of it, adding a functional read to a structural one without new capital equipment.

⚡ The mechanism is the whole story

The target population is veterans dealing with respiratory illness from burn pit smoke exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan, including COPD, asthma, and lung cancer. According to the bill’s sponsors, standard whole-lung testing procedures “can be less sensitive to changes in lung function seen in early disease or when abnormalities are limited to a specific region.”

That clinical gap is real. I see it every day in lung cancer screening. Structural CT finds the nodule. It tells you almost nothing about what the surrounding lung is doing.

What most coverage missed: this is not a reimbursement-code change. xAID makes this explicit. Congress is simply appropriating money for an agency to buy a defined class of FDA-cleared software for a specific patient population. That is a completely different lever than NTAP or a Medicare payment pathway for AI devices.

🧭 Three questions every imaging AI leader should ask right now

1. Is there a defined federal patient population that your cleared software could serve and that Congress could appropriate for directly?
2. Does your technology address a documented clinical gap in a population where standard care is already failing?
3. Could your product category language survive a legislative definition without naming your vendor?

If you can answer yes to all three, the AIR CARE for Vets Act is your roadmap, not just a news item.

Burn Pits 360 co-founder and retired Army Captain Le Roy Torres said it simply: “Being believed is not a privilege, it is a right.” That is the patient case. The policy case is that Congress just showed it is willing to fund imaging AI directly when the clinical need is clear enough and the regulatory pathway is already done.

Save this post. The next time someone tells you the only path to sustainable imaging AI revenue is a CMS reimbursement code, show them H.R. 9666.

👉 Follow Jonathan Govette, CEO of Oatmeal Health, for daily healthcare insights on LinkedIn. Deeper dives in The Oatmeal Bite on Substack: https://news.oatmealhealth.com