The U.S. expected 17,000 disputes a year when it passed this medical bills law. It gets over 2 million instead
Source: Fortune ·
Researchers estimate the arbitration process alone in the No Surprises Act cost health plans $22.4 billion in the law’s first four years.
From the source
Imagine you get hit by a car. An ambulance brings you to the nearest hospital. Your private health insurance covers emergency care, but the hospital isn’t in your plan’s network. Before 2022, if you received emergency care from an out-of-network provider or hospital, you could get hit with an extra, often huge bill on top of what you owe as a copay, coinsurance or deductible. A law called the No Surprises Act, which took effect in 2022, was designed to protect people with private health insurance from just these situations. It limits your costs to what you would have paid if the ambulance had brought you to an in-network hospital or you were treated by an in-network provider instead. As a health policy researcher and a former federal employee who helped draft the rules to implement the No Surprises Act, I applaud the law’s success in preventing patients from being hit with surprise medical bills in most cases. However, a small number of out-of-network providers are using the law to…