Washington, D.C. — With employers and consumers already bearing the exorbitant cost of Independent Dispute Resolution (IDR) abuse, the Coalition Against Surprise Medical Billing (CASMB) today launched a six-figure ad campaign to urge policymakers to oppose H.R. 4710, the No Surprises Act Enforcement Act, a bill that would reward the actors misusing the IDR process and increasing healthcare costs for consumers and employers.
The latest advertising campaign follows recent investigations from the New York Times and STAT that detail systemic abuse of the IDR process by out-of-network providers and IDR middlemen — a harmful trend contributing to inflated awards, a flood of ineligible claims, and misaligned incentives for arbitrators. The Washington Examiner editorial board recently called out the IDR abuses as directly undermining the patient safeguards included in the No Surprises Act: “This is not patient protection but industrialized lawfare.”
Rather than addressing these issues, the No Surprises Act Enforcement Act would double down on the inherent flaws within IDR. The bill would:
- Impose substantial new costs on employers and health plans — with interest — for any delay in the final payment adjustments, disregarding the roughly 40 percent of disputes that were challenged as ineligible for IDR;
- Ignore well-documented abuse associated with IDR middlemen and certain private equity-backed providersflooding the IDR system with ineligible claims; and
- Fail to address the misaligned incentives that financially encourage arbitrators to push as many disputes as possible through IDR — overwhelming the system and awarding unjustified payments to out-of-network providers.
Recently, 58 leading employers and employer organizations sent a letter to Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith outlining their strong opposition to the bill. The groups note that, “The No Surprises Act Enforcement Act is the wrong solution at the wrong time. We urge Congress to reject this flawed legislation that will compound the problems of a flawed IDR process.”
As the Ways and Means Committee considers H.R. 4710, the Coalition urges members of Congress to reject legislation that rewards the very actors abusing and misusing the IDR process, and to instead prioritize reforms that ensure the No Surprises Act achieves its goal of reducing healthcare costs for consumers and employers.
To learn more, visit: https://stopsurprisebillingnow.com/arbitration
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