Meet your new rights under the No Surprises Act

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The No Surprises Act — a new law that protects us from some outrageous out-of-network hospital bills — takes effect this month. That's great news, but (and there’s always a but) there are some important caveats to know about.

Like, for instance: these protections only apply to care you get in a hospital. Then there’s the deceptively-named Surprise Billing Protection form they might ask you to sign. And there’s more.

We break down what you need to know about your rights under this new law, what traps to look out for, and who to call if something smells fishy.

Actually, here: The federal hotline for reporting No Surprises Act violations: 1-800-985-3059.

Big thanks to our guides: Patricia Kelmar, Health Care Campaigns Director at U.S. PIRG, and Julia Nigrelli from health care consulting firm Chi-Matic.

The federal hotline for reporting No Surprises Act violations: 1-800-985-3059.

Here’s a transcript for the episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, here is something I don't think I've ever said on this show before.
0:04.5	This episode is about a big important piece of good news. I mean, I'm going to kind of ruin it
0:09.7	in a couple of minutes with a bunch of warnings, which I promise will be both important and useful,
0:14.0	but let's just enjoy this for right now. Starting January 1st of this year, so like right now,
0:20.4	a new federal law called the No Surprises Act protects us against what has been one of the most
0:25.7	outrageous experiences our healthcare system has to offer, which, you know, if you've been listening
0:30.8	to this show, or I don't know, just living in the US, let's really say in something.
0:35.6	We're talking about surprise bills, full name, surprise out of network bills, which go like this.
0:41.6	You go to a hospital, like do an emergency room or a surgery or to give birth,
0:45.6	and you make sure to pick a hospital that is in network for your insurance. I mean, of course,
0:50.3	you do, right? Except then, somebody gets involved in your care who doesn't work directly for
0:55.3	the hospital and who doesn't take your insurance. Surprise! You get a big out of network bill from
1:00.8	that. Your insurance doesn't cover much of it, and you're on the hook for the rest of whatever
1:04.4	wild amount is written on that dough. And a lot of times, this would be the kind of provider you
1:09.1	don't even pick for yourself, like an ER doc or an anesthesiologist or a radiologist. These bills
1:15.0	have been super, super common. The feds estimate that 10 million surprise bills go out every year,
1:20.6	an academic study said that one out of every five ER visits results in one. And frankly,
1:25.7	I have wondered if those numbers are lowballing things. But then a surprise sect says,
1:29.8	hey, guess what? This is no longer your problem. You're just going to pay whatever you would have
1:34.4	paid if this provider had been in networked. They will have to work out the rest with your insurance
1:38.7	company, but you are done. And this is a big honking deal. It puts a couple of episodes at the
1:45.0	show at a day. I'm going to record new interest for them one of these days. It's awesome. And
	...

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