Is the No Surprises Act working? Is it protecting patients from surprise medical bills? Are providers and insurers happy?
The Washington Post reports mixed results.
On one hand, millions of people have been protected from surprise medical bills.
But on the other hand…
Experts thought that once the terms of the program were understood there would be only about 22,000 cases sent to arbitration – the law’s Independent Dispute Resolution process – in 2022. Instead, nearly 500,000 cases went that route, with nearly half of the requests for arbitration coming from physician staffing companies owned by private equity firms. At least one company went out of business, it has been suggested, because it no longer could take advantage of how it formerly billed out-of-network patients and another found its credit rating lowered for the same reason.
Learn more about the early returns on implementation of the No Surprises Act and its effect on surprise medical bills from Washington Post article “The No Surprises Act comes with some surprises.”