Stop Surprise Medical Bills
Millions of Americans receive a surprise medical bill every year, bankrupting families and raising health care costs for everyone, including employers and taxpayers.
Our Mission
Members of the Coalition Against Surprise Medical Billing, which represent accountable care providers, leading employer groups, and health insurance providers and the tens of millions of people they employ and serve each day, support meaningful solutions to end surprise medical billing that would:
- Protect patients and families from surprise medical bills sent by out-of-network providers.
- Maintain fair and equitable payments for providers with a benchmark standard based on local, competitive market-based rates.
- Help reduce consumers’ health insurance premiums and taxpayers’ costs by avoiding an arbitration process that adds unnecessary cost, delay and bureaucracy to the health system and is particularly harmful for smaller companies.
The Problem
Millions of patients face surprise medical bills they did not expect at prices they cannot afford. While the majority of doctors and providers do their best to deliver fair, affordable care for patients and their families, there is a small but significant number of doctors and hospitals responsible for the vast majority of surprise billing.
When clinical specialists choose not to participate in health insurance providers’ networks – or if they do not meet the standards for inclusion – they often demand a blank check from patients for their services. The consequences are significant: financial stress, fighting a complicated, confusing bureaucracy, harassed by collection agencies, and often legal action for non-payment. And when a health insurance provider steps in on a patient’s behalf to cover the surprise medical bill, it raises premiums for everyone else.
The Solution
Any real solution to surprise medical bills must protect patients when they need emergency care and establish a fair, market-based benchmark based on local negotiated rates to stop abuse of the system by some providers. This benchmark would allow consumers to benefit from negotiated in-network rates and ensure fair and equitable treatment for health care providers, consumers, employers and taxpayers.
The Coalition’s latest advertising campaign calls on Congress to protect patients and stop surprise billing with fair, common-sense reforms that will lower costs for consumers, employers and taxpayers.
News
Morning Consult: Ending Surprise Billing Protects Patients and Honesty in Health Care
Most of us take great pains to ensure in advance that the doctors and hospitals we use are in network by our insurance plan. We assume that, when we go to an in-network hospital, that everyone who sees us, from the emergency room doctor to the radiologist who reads...
read moreCoalition Expands Membership with Union, Employer Groups
Washington, D.C. – As part of a unified voice of employers, unions, patient and consumer groups as well as health plans calling for new federal safeguards, the Coalition Against Surprise Medical Billing welcomed UNITE HERE, National Business Group on Health, Pacific...
read moreLeading Labor and Employer Groups Urge Congress to Advance a Fair, Market-Based Benchmark, Reject Proposals For Government-Mandated Arbitration
Joining a growing chorus of support for a fair, local, market-based approach to protect patients and families from surprise medical billing, more than 30 key employer and labor organizations are calling on Congress to address the market failure—fueled by a handful of...
read moreTake Action
Tell Washington it’s time to protect patients from surprise and unfair medical bills.