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Tucked into the relief bill: A BAN on most "surprise medical bills."
It took many years, blocked by above all Republicans serving special interests, but it's happening!
Surprise Medical Bills Cost Americans Millions. Congress Is Finally Set to Ban Most of Them.
Surprise bills happen when an out-of-network provider is unexpectedly involved in a patient’s care. Patients go to a hospital that accepts their insurance, for example, but get treated there by an emergency room physician who doesn’t. Such doctors often bill those patients for large fees, far higher than what health plans typically pay.
Language included in the $900 billion spending deal reached Sunday night and headed for final passage on Monday will make those bills illegal. Instead of charging patients, health providers will now have to work with insurers to settle on a fair price. The new changes will take effect in 2022, and will apply to doctors, hospitals and air ambulances, though not ground ambulances.
Academic researchers have found that millions of Americans receive these types of surprise bills each year, with as many as one in five emergency room visits resulting in such a charge. The bills most commonly come from health providers that patients are not able to select, such as emergency room physicians, anesthesiologists and ambulances. The average surprise charge for an emergency room visit is just above $600, but patients have received bills larger than $100,000 from out-of-network providers they did not select.
Some private-equity firms have turned this kind of billing into a robust business model, buying emergency room doctor groups and moving the providers out of network so they could bill larger fees.
Among the major consumer problems in the fiendishly complex health system, surprise billing was the rare Washington issue that both parties could get behind. Health committee leaders have been engaged on the issue for years, as has the White House. President-elect Joe Biden included the proposal in his campaign health care agenda. It had the backing of many prominent and powerful legislators, including Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and the retiring chairman of the Senate health committee. A survey published Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 80 percent of adults want the practice banned. More than a dozen states, including Texas and California, have passed bans of their own on surprise billing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/upshot/surprise-medical-bills-congress-ban.html
Surprise bills happen when an out-of-network provider is unexpectedly involved in a patient’s care. Patients go to a hospital that accepts their insurance, for example, but get treated there by an emergency room physician who doesn’t. Such doctors often bill those patients for large fees, far higher than what health plans typically pay.
Language included in the $900 billion spending deal reached Sunday night and headed for final passage on Monday will make those bills illegal. Instead of charging patients, health providers will now have to work with insurers to settle on a fair price. The new changes will take effect in 2022, and will apply to doctors, hospitals and air ambulances, though not ground ambulances.
Academic researchers have found that millions of Americans receive these types of surprise bills each year, with as many as one in five emergency room visits resulting in such a charge. The bills most commonly come from health providers that patients are not able to select, such as emergency room physicians, anesthesiologists and ambulances. The average surprise charge for an emergency room visit is just above $600, but patients have received bills larger than $100,000 from out-of-network providers they did not select.
Some private-equity firms have turned this kind of billing into a robust business model, buying emergency room doctor groups and moving the providers out of network so they could bill larger fees.
Among the major consumer problems in the fiendishly complex health system, surprise billing was the rare Washington issue that both parties could get behind. Health committee leaders have been engaged on the issue for years, as has the White House. President-elect Joe Biden included the proposal in his campaign health care agenda. It had the backing of many prominent and powerful legislators, including Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and the retiring chairman of the Senate health committee. A survey published Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 80 percent of adults want the practice banned. More than a dozen states, including Texas and California, have passed bans of their own on surprise billing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/upshot/surprise-medical-bills-congress-ban.html
45 replies
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but there are many who don't trust it. 
Does it matter what the title of the program is as long as it's affordable UHC?
I aged out of waiting for the public option, which is NOT-for-profit I'd planned to choose as soon as it was added to the ACA, but I'm still waiting anyway:
Biden: To achieve that objective, we will give all Americans the choice to select a high-quality, affordable public option through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. The public option will provide at least one plan choice without deductibles; will be administered by CMS, not private companies; and will cover all primary care without any co-payments and control costs for other treatments by negotiating prices with doctors and hospitals, just like Medicare does on behalf of older people. ...
Democrats will take aggressive action to ensure that Americans do not pay more for prescription drugs than people in other advanced economies, and ensure that all necessary medications are covered. We will empower Medicare to at last be able to negotiate prescription drug prices for all public and private purchasers—for families and businesses, as well as older Americans—no matter where they get their coverage. We will also prevent the price of brand-name and outlier generic drugs from rising faster than the inflation rate. We will cap out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors, and ensure that effective treatments for chronic health conditions are available at little or no cost.
Democrats will take aggressive action to ensure that Americans do not pay more for prescription drugs than people in other advanced economies, and ensure that all necessary medications are covered. We will empower Medicare to at last be able to negotiate prescription drug prices for all public and private purchasers—for families and businesses, as well as older Americans—no matter where they get their coverage. We will also prevent the price of brand-name and outlier generic drugs from rising faster than the inflation rate. We will cap out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors, and ensure that effective treatments for chronic health conditions are available at little or no cost.
Unfortunately, right now the plan is to expand dental and eye care to Medicare recipients only, asap. Adding those coverages for all is another step. Should have been already, but in 2016 the people spoke...
If anyone knows someone in GA, ask him or her to please vote to make it all possible ASAP.
