If you have a medical emergency, you will no longer need to worry about a large bill from a doctor you did not choose.
For years, millions of Americans with medical emergencies could receive another nasty surprise: a bill from a doctor they did not choose and who did not accept their insurance. A law that goes into effect Saturday will make many such bills illegal.
The change is the result of bipartisan legislation passed during the Trump administration and fine-tuned by the Biden administration. It is a major new consumer protection, covering nearly all emergency medical services, and most routine care.
“I think this is so pro-consumer, it’s so pro-patient — and its effect will eventually be felt by literally everybody who interacts with a health care system,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, who was part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers who wrote the bill. He said he counted the bill as among his top achievements as a lawmaker.
Even with insurance, emergency medical care can still be expensive, and patients with high deductible plans could still face large medical bills. But the law will eliminate the risk that an out-of-network doctor or hospital will send an extra bill. Currently, those bills add up to billions in costs for consumers each year. Read more @ https://tinyurl.com/2p9wedyf
