Last week, President Donald Trump officially asked Congress to introduce new laws to protect US citizens from balance medical bills coming from those doctors who are out of network and could charge patients a lot of more money.
In the recent meeting in the White House, the president revealed suggestions the government is going to send to lawmakers in the Congress to create a legislative set which could resolve this issue.
“We are going to require hospitals and insurance firms to take the whole responsibilities,” said Trump.
Balance bills happen when people visit a clinical that they think is in their network of health insurance, but then are charged by a physician or doctor who is not in the network.
The administration demands the legislative authorities to especially pay attention to those people who are getting emergency room care and cannot afford to out-of-network services.
“Also, the suggestions focus on those people who visit a hospital for elective surgery but they are completely clueless about being treated and charged for services from a physician or doctor who is out of their insurance network,” said Joe Grogan, head of the domestic policy department in the White House.
On Thursday, a trade group, which is on behalf of the US health insurers named the America’s Health Insurance Plans, said that it completely supports the idea of banning doctors or specialists from giving patients balance bills in emergency cases and asking clinics or hospitals to inform people of the insurance network status of all doctors.
Congress has organized hearings on this issue and a bill is drafted by a bipartisan team of senators to protect US citizens from balance bills. Maggie Hassan, Democratic Senator, along with a few Republican representatives and senators, attended these events.
The White House announced that it doesn’t want federal spending to go up as a result of new laws. That would occur if Medicaid, the state health insurance program for the disabled and the poor, and Medicare, the state health insurance program for US citizens above 65 years of age, have to spend more on patients’ bills.
Frank Pallone, Democratic Representative and head of the Committee for House Energy and Commerce, and Greg Walden, Republican Representative and the ranking member of the committee, announced in a statement that they could work on bipartisan balanced billing legislation.
“We should not leave anybody in financial hardship when they have no faults. That’s why through no fault of their own,” said Walden and Pallone.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/05/09/us/politics/ap-us-trump-surprise-medical-bills.html
