Sen Young And Others Work To Curb Surprise Medical Bills

demand-for-payment-on-morguefile-by-dodgertonskillhause

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Your hospital bills sometimes contain expensive surprises. There are bipartisan efforts in the House and Senate to put a stop to it.

Your insurance may have a network of preferred providers — if you go to one of them, it’s cheaper than if you go out of network. But Indiana Senator Todd Young says there are too many cases like a Kokomo woman who went to a network hospital, then got hit with a 13-hundred-dollar bill because one of the E-R doctors there wasn’t in-network. Other senators report similar angry calls from constituents who double-checked their provider was in-network, and still got unexpected charges for hundreds or thousands of dollars from a part of the medical team who wasn’t.

Young and five other senators have authored a bill which would charge you the midpoint of your network’s prices in that situation. If the doctor doesn’t think that’s enough, he and the insurance company can fight it out in arbitration and leave you out of it. President Trump urged Congress last week to address the issue, and a similar bill has bipartisan support in the House.

Along with Young, the authors of the Senate bill are Louisiana Republican and physician Bill Cassidy, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bennet of Colorado, Alaska Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and Democrats Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Tom Carper of Delaware. The bill is expected to get a committee vote by the end of the month.

 

photo by DodgertonSkillhause on morguefile