Bipartisan legislation to protect patients from getting massive “surprise” medical bills is included in a year-end package deal reached Sunday, clearing the way for the measure to pass Congress after almost two years of negotiations.
The legislation will protect patients from getting medical bills for thousands of dollars in common situations like going to the emergency room and getting care from a doctor who happened to not be covered by the patient’s insurance plan.
Lawmakers in both parties have been pushing for a solution for months, identifying surprise bills as an especially egregious practice in American health care that should be relatively low-hanging fruit for Congress to solve.
But the push set off fierce lobbying from powerful health care industry groups, including doctors, hospitals and insurers, who jockeyed over how much the insurer would have to pay the doctor once the patient was taken out of the middle.
Showing the clout of doctors and hospitals, the final legislation moves significantly in their direction, and away from an earlier version that they warned would lead to damaging cuts to their payments, but that consumer groups and unions had touted as saving patients and the government more money.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}
