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The Insurance Professor, Victor Whang is excited to share some important breaking news that will impact all people who have health insurance in the US in 2022! 

As many of you know, I have gone to Washington many times to lobby for changes to our health and Medicare programs that are in place. Because of my involvement with MDAHU (Metro Detroit Association of Health Underwriters) the state chapter of NAHU (National Association of Health Underwriters), a political lobbying group based in Washington DC, I am excited to let the public know that one of the major items we lobbied Congress about for years has just been acted upon in a bill that was included in the latest $900 billion coronavirus relief package President Donald Trump signed earlier this week. It is a major issue known as “Surprise Medical Bills”. This is an issue that has plagued the American public for decades and arises when a person is taken to a hospital in an emergency, conscious or unconscious. Because the injured person may have no choice where the ambulance takes them, they may end up receiving bills for services rendered, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars. Why would this happen, you ask?  It is because some doctors or medical facilities might be “out of network”. This means that the hospital where they ended up might not take their health insurance plan, so the patient is now responsible to pay for all or part of the care they received. This is unfair and financially debilitating to the patient many times, resulting in bankruptcy because of unpaid medical bills, even though the patient had health insurance coverage. This terrible problem is finally being addressed by Congress in a bill that requires providers to go to arbitration before sending these financially crippling bills to unsuspecting patients for payment.

Many of the lawmakers (senators, congressmen, and women) were not even aware of what a “surprise medical bill” was when I and fellow members of MDAHU first started going to talk to them 4 years ago. This latest action by Congress directly results from our lobbying efforts to get rid of terrible billing practices. This is only a start to a bill that needs to be revised and improved upon as time goes on, but at least we are finally getting some traction to get rid of this terrible billing problem. 

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