MEDICAL BILLING NEWS
Keep abreast of news and information on medical billing and its impact on patients and consumers.
Archives - August, 2023
A group of medical providers filed a lawsuit against Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, alleging they conspired to omit small unpaid medical bills from their reports, which places them at a severe disadvantage compared to hospitals.
- Benefits Pro
- NPR
Americans are protected from most surprise medical bills by the No Surprises Act that took effect last year. But there's one key item the legislation left out: ambulance rides.
- CBS News
Poverty is not necessarily an indicator of medical debt, according to a new analysis that found the middle class has greater amounts of unpaid health care bills.
- Medical Economics
When it comes to lowering health care costs, ensuring fair medical billing must be part of the discussion.
- Alabama Political Reporter
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said he is glad Minneapolis-based Allina Health is ending a billing and collection policy under scrutiny from his office but said the health system's decision does not change the status of his investigation.
- Becker's Hospital Review
I spent 18 years of my career in an emergency room, treating close to 45,000 patients. Exorbitant hospital prices hurt hard-working Americans by straining family budgets, burdening seniors with unexpected debts, increasing our government’s spending — and limiting the care patients need.
- Idaho Statesman
Allina Health, a large Midwestern system of hospitals and clinics, says it has decided to stop cutting off medical care to patients with unpaid medical bills of $4,500 or more.
- New York Times
Medical credit cards position themselves as alternatives to spread out the cost of out-of-pocket expenses for services that aren’t covered by insurance for patients, but their practices are under investigation by the federal government as predatory, and their use expanded to covering health care that should be billed to insurance.
- Nevada Current
Middle-class Americans are the most likely to be saddled with medical debt, with nearly 1 in 4 — or roughly 17 million people — having unpaid medical bills, according to a report shared first with Axios from center-left think tank Third Way.
- Axios
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced on Friday an investigation into Allina Health’s billing practices, following a New York Times investigation that revealed the health care system cut off non-emergency care to patients behind on medical debt.
- The Minnesota Reformer
Some documents should be kept, but others can be shredded and tossed. Here’s on how long to keep medical bills and other financial documents.
- HerMoney
When Congress passed the No Surprises Act in 2021 to curb such billing elsewhere in health care, lawmakers dropped measures that could have reined in how much an ambulance would cost. As a result, the price of an ambulance trip can still vary widely for reasons that no patient can reasonably foresee or control.
- PBS NewsHour
There are calls for lawmakers to pass a bill that would make it easier for people dealing with medical debt. This follows the release of a report by researchers, which says some North Carolina hospitals file a disproportionate number of lawsuits in this state to collect unpaid medical expenses.
- CBS17.com
How did three siblings who took identical ambulance rides (from the same car wreck to the same hospital) end up with three wildly different bills? The answer lies in the No Surprises Act.
- Kaiser Health News
North Carolina hospitals — led by the state’s largest public medical system — have sued thousands of their patients since 2017, according to a new analysis that sheds additional light on the aggressive tactics U.S. hospitals routinely use to collect from people who fall behind on their bills.
- Kaiser Health News
- WOOD TV8
California's largest public hospital plans to start notifying 43,000 former patients Monday that they may be eligible for refunds or billing corrections, part of what advocates called a major legal settlement that will help force the hospital to fulfill its charity care obligations.
- Kaiser Health News
Nonprofit status provides little if any assurance that hospitals will behave in accordance with their charitable mission or provide sufficient community benefits to justify their favored tax status.
- VTDigger
A bipartisan group of senators wants federal tax regulators to probe nonprofit hospitals’ compliance with community benefit requirements.
- STAT
Patient Rights Advocate, an advocacy group, contends that some hospitals are still falling short of a law that went into effect in 2021 requiring them to publicly post their prices.
- NPR
With tens of millions of Americans burdened by medical debt, hospitals and other medical providers are increasingly shuttling their patients into loans serviced by banks, credit cards, and other financial services companies.
- KFF Health News
Employers and all patients need access to these actual health plan rates to know what they are expected to pay.
- Medical Economics
Experts say compliance with transparency rule is improving, but not all patients are experiencing the full benefits
- InvestigateTV
Healthcare can be pricey, even for those with insurance. A 2021 federal law says everyone is entitled to know the price tag before they receive any healthcare. However, a study of 2,000 hospitals nationwide shows most hospitals nationwide are not fully complying.
- 25 News Now
One component of provider pricing growing in prominence is hospitals charging “facility fees” for care provided in outpatient and physician office settings that hospitals own or control.
- Health Affairs
Recent changes to credit reporting have made it so that a late payment on a medical bill may not cause any damage.
- The Ascent
It is seemingly such an easy question: if I need an ambulance, what will it cost me? Unfortunately, there's only a complex answer, summarized as “it depends.”
- The American Council on Science and Health