By Josh Bryant
Congratulations to Congress for passing the much needed No Surprises Act. Until now, too many families faced bankruptcy and financial ruin if they had a medical emergency even if they were insured. The problem was that in an emergency, when you do not have the option of picking who you got medical services from, the insurance companies would deny claims for being out of network.
The No surprises Act sought to fix this by coming up with a dispute resolution process. Unfortunately, the Department of Health and Human Services ignored the intent of the bill and wrote rules that favored the insurance companies over the patients and frontline medical personnel. I am glad a court threw out these misguided rules and sent the HHS back to the table to rewrite them. Congress needs to tell the HHS to follow the original intent of the bill to protect the patients and medical personnel. Put simply, they need to tell the HHS to get it right this time.