Surprise billing law pleases patients, frustrates doctors

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More than two years after California’s surprise-billing law took effect, there’s one thing on which consumer advocates, doctors and insurers all agree: The law has been effective at protecting many people from bills they might have been saddled with from doctors who aren’t in their insurance network.

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But the consensus stops there.

Federal lawmakers are eyeing the California law as a possible model as they debate legislative proposals that would address surprise billing at the national level. Or a couple may be surprised to learn that the neonatologist caring for their baby in intensive care is outside their insurance network, even though the hospital where they gave birth is inside it. Diagnostic specialists like radiologists and pathologists whom patients rarely see may be out-of-network at an in-network hospital as well.

This has led some physicians to try to gain leverage by consolidating practices, a move that can drive up health care costs significantly, the doctors warn.Hernandez Conte, who chairs the legislative and practice affairs division of the California Society of Anesthesiologists, also pointed to data from the California Department of Managed Health Care showing that consumer complaints about access to care have risen from 415 in 2016 to 614 in 2018, a 48% jump.

“It’s more a reflection of what are some of the potential things we should look at down the road,” she said. Similarly, when the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans surveyed 11 large California health insurers about in-network providers during the two years after the law took effect, it found that the numbers grew or remained flat across specialties. There was a 16% increase in the number of in-network physicians overall, including a 26% rise in diagnostic radiologists and an 18% bump in anesthesiologists.

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