A Congressional subcommittee held a hearing yesterday on the topic of surprise medical billing and at least one of the witnesses who testified put the burden on the healthcare facilities and the insurance companies to better inform patients when facing a situation where a facility or doctor is outside of the patient’s insurance network.
Surprise medical billing — when an individual receives a bill for treatment, either because of an emergency that required the patient to go to a hospital that was out of his or her network, or when a doctor at an in-network hospital is not part of that network — has become a hot-button issue for consumer advocates and lawmakers at the state and federal level. Individuals have received massive bills for treatment they thought was going to be covered, and in many cases, those bills are assigned to collection agencies, which get tangled up in the mess.
The House Education & Labor Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions held a hearing yesterday on the topic and invited a number of health policy experts to weigh in.
“This is inexcusable behavior on the part of doctors, hospitals, and health insurers,” said Jack Hoadley
