News

The city of San Antonio is $40 million over its employee healthcare budget this year following costly misuse and abuse of the independent dispute resolution (IDR) process by a handful of out-of-network providers. New reporting from the San Antonio Express-News details...

Untenable and unsustainable IDR costs are driving up premiums for employers and employees, and new data from researchers at Georgetown University uncovers how out-of-network providers’ abuse and misuse of arbitration has become a $22 billion affordability crisis....

Abuse of the No Surprises Act’s independent dispute resolution (IDR) process by certain private equity-backed providers and IDR firms continues to drive up premium costs for employers, unions, and workers. POLITICO recently reported that one national health insurer is...

When Congress wrote the No Surprises Act, it borrowed its arbitration model from Major League Baseball. A new analysis from the New York Times lays out how that system has failed in healthcare. More than 2.5 million disputes went to arbitration last year, compared...

IDR abuse is accelerating. That's the takeaway from a new analysis by the Niskanen Center, which dug into CMS's latest data on the No Surprises Act's arbitration process, covering the second half of 2025. Disputes are up nearly 75% year-over-year, providers are still...

Last month, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a rare warning: the intended cost savings for employers and employees under the No Surprises Act are in jeopardy because the law's dispute backstop, the Independent Dispute Resolution (IDR) process,...

STAT's Tara Bannow recently published an investigation into Nutex Health, a hospital operator whose financial turnaround from near bankruptcy has been fueled by abusing the No Surprises Act's arbitration process. Her reporting builds on the growing body of evidence...

In The New York Times, the headline was "Trump Administration Says Surprise Billing Law Is Being 'Gamed' by Doctors." In The Wall Street Journal, it was “Medical Billing Arbitration Paid Out $15 Billion to Providers in Surprise Bill Disputes." In STAT, it was “This...

Just when you thought IDR awards couldn’t be any more outrageous, the latest data released by CMS confirms that the extreme and excessive IDR payouts in 2025 alone have totaled nearly $15 billion – a 275% increase from 2024. IDR abuse is the healthcare affordability...

The Wall Street Journal previewed new CMS data that show $15 billion in independent dispute resolution (IDR) awards to out-of-network providers under the No Surprises Act’s federal arbitration process in 2025. The staggering amount — far exceeding the previous...