States increasingly pass laws to protect patients from surprise billing, varying widely in scoop. Surprise bills occur when a patient is treated by an out-of-network provider and receives a bill from the provider for the difference between the payment made by the health plan and the patient’s cost-sharing amount. Typical scenarios are when a patient accesses emergency services outside the health plan’s network or receives services at an in-network hospital from an out-of-network physician (e.g., anesthesiologist, radiologist, pathologist). Despite state legislative activity, state protections are limited by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and do not apply to self-funded employee welfare benefit plans. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, approximately 60 percent of workers get coverage through a self-funded health plan. Because these state-level protections vary widely in scope and do not apply to patients in self-funded health plans, federal legislation may provide an opportunity to more comprehensively address surprise billing. Continue reading “Recent Federal Legislative Activity to Address Surprise Billing”