LAWMAKERS APPEAR INCREASINGLY likely to vote next year, at least in the Senate, on reshaping health care practices to funnel more money toward the front lines.

A panel of health care experts is ready to recommend establishing a state benchmark that calls for at least a doubling of the share of health care spending in Massachusetts on primary care. The proposal would call for the share of primary care spending to be ramped up to that level over the next five years, putting a specific target and timeline on paper for the first time.

With that, by the time legislators gavel in for the first time in 2026, they will have in hand a potential road map for navigating one of the thorniest health care issues facing the state — the desperate shortage of primary care providers.

They will also have the pressure to act, and the political headaches, that come with it.

Sen. Cindy Friedman, the Senate’s point person on most health care matters, said she expects a vote on some form of primary care reforms next year.

“I’ve got no indication that there is not a will to do this, at least in the Senate, in 2026,” she told CommonWealth Beacon.

Primary care is the linchpin of the health care network, the entry point where patients can get preventive services that head off more expensive care from specialists or emergency departments further downstream.

It’s also the area of health care most in crisis. Massachusetts has a shrinking primary care workforce, making it more difficult for people to get appointments. One national study published in June estimated a patient in the Boston area faced an average wait of 69 days when booking a physical with a new provider, the longest among 15 cities surveyed.

Beacon Hill convened a task force to examine the pressure points and to report back with specific actions lawmakers could take to bring care back within reach for more people.

The panel, of which Friedman is a member, is finalizing a recommendation that the Legislature codify a new primary care spending target. Members largely agreed last week on the general framework: they want Beacon Hill either to double the share of health care spending on primary care or to require 15 percent of health care dollars to go toward primary care, whichever is greater, over a five-year implementation period.

Primary care made up only about 6.7 percent of all commercial health spending in 2023, the most recent year with data available. Doubling that share over half a decade would represent a dramatic reorientation.

That is especially so because the task force does not want to increase total health care spending, either. Higher primary care spending would, under this vision, mean less money for other areas of health care like specialists and pharmaceuticals.

“Given this difficult environment we’re in where everybody’s broke, grabbing money from anywhere is going to be particularly challenging,” said task force member Barbra Rabson, who is president of the nonprofit research organization Massachusetts Health Quality Partners.

David Seltz, executive director of the state Health Policy Commission, described the proposed spending target as a “fundamental rebalancing of what we care about and value in our health care system.”

“We need to nudge our system to care and value primary care at a different level than it does right now,” Seltz said at a December 3 task force meeting. “Without government setting those goals and the private sector committing to them, it’s not going to happen on its own.”

Past attempts to force more money toward primary care have sputtered out on Beacon Hill, and while the wait for reform continues, the situation continues to worsen.

It could also prove difficult to get the full industry on board if the envisioned resource shift takes money away from pharmaceutical companies, specialists, or the largest academic hospitals, all of which wield considerable lobbying influence.

Friedman took aim at Big Pharma in particular, noting that pharmacy spending increased 10 percent year-over-year in the latest data.

“We have to make sure that everybody supports a solution to this, and so far, I would argue, pharmaceutical [companies] and [pharmacy benefit managers] have not actually done anything to help us solve this problem,” she said.

It’s not clear if House leaders are as eager to force a paradigm change in primary care as their Senate counterparts and Gov. Maura Healey, who nearly a year ago called for creating a “whole army of primary care providers.”

Setting a target is one thing, and ensuring the health care system meets it is another.

Members of the task force had that in mind. Their recommendation will also urge the Legislature to empower state agencies such as the Health Policy Commission and the Division of Insurance to hold payers and providers accountable to the proposed spending requirements.

“I think the message needs to go to the Legislature that you need some teeth behind this,” said Retailers Association of Massachusetts president Jon Hurst.

That’s another area with a mixed legislative record. Health Policy Commission leaders have spent years asking Beacon Hill to bulk up their authority to enforce cost-control efforts, or to issue more stringent penalties for entities that drive excessive spending growth.

The Legislature has slow-walked many of those requests, though a pair of laws Healey signed in January boosted the commission’s data-collection and monitoring capabilities.

The primary care task force is not done with its work. Its recommendation for a spending target is due to Beacon Hill by December 15, and other so-called “deliverables” about reforms to payment models, health plan design, and workforce pipelines have deadlines in March and May.

Friedman, who described herself as “impatient” to take up legislation, said she does not think lawmakers need to wait until the task force checks off every item before crafting their response.

“We will have enough important information that we can start this process,” she said. “We’re not going to solve it all in one pass. It’s too big, and too many things need to change or shift. But I think we can do a lot, and we can do it based on what the task force tells us.”