{"id":13519,"date":"2020-05-21T05:02:22","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T09:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/?p=13519"},"modified":"2020-05-19T11:45:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T15:45:02","slug":"hhs-quietly-outlaws-surprise-medical-billing-for-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/2020\/05\/hhs-quietly-outlaws-surprise-medical-billing-for-everyone.html","title":{"rendered":"HHS Quietly Outlaws Surprise Medical Billing for Everyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Federal officials said if hospitals and other providers take emergency funds amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they will be barred from sending balance bills to COVID-19 patients. However, the broad terms HHS uses to describe COVID-19 patients has some analysts interpreting the text as a ban on all surprise billing, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/khn.org\/news\/in-fine-print-hhs-appears-to-ban-all-surprise-billing-during-the-pandemic\/\">Kaiser Health News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>HHS Terms and Conditions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the HHS terms and conditions for eligibility for the emergency relief funds, the agency <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hhs.gov\/coronavirus\/cares-act-provider-relief-fund\/index.html\">uses the language<\/a>: &#8220;HHS broadly views every patient as a possible case of COVID-19.&#8221; When hospitals received the first wave of funding, they had to sign a form saying that &#8220;for all care for a possible or actual case of COVID-19,&#8221; the provider wouldn&#8217;t charge more out of pocket if the patient&#8217;s insurance plan was out of network, a practice known as surprise billing.<\/p>\n<p>As reported in the article, some say that line could ban the practice of balance billing, in which a patient is billed for the difference between what a provider charges and what the insurer pays, a major source of surprise bills \u2015 which can be financially devastating \u2015 for patients. The move caught groups in the surprise billing fight off guard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe intent of the terms and conditions was to bar balance billing for actual or presumptive COVID-19,\u201d an HHS spokesperson said in the Kaiser Health news article. \u201cWe are clarifying this in the terms and conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Additionally: \u201cBecause the terms and conditions do not appear to be sufficiently clarified, there is a concern that there will be legal challenges around the balance-billing provision,\u201d said Rodney Whitlock, a health policy consultant and former Senate staffer.<\/p>\n<p>Along with HHS, individual states have also taken action to ensure health systems and patients are protected from surprise medical bills during the pandemic. Connecticut <a href=\"https:\/\/garfunkelwild.com\/ct-governor-signs-orders-regarding-waivers-for-healthcare-providers-related-to-covid-19\/\">adopted<\/a> a policy to ensure patients are protected from incurring surprise medical bills for treatments provided during the pandemic. Patients who would be out-of-network must be treated as in-network for emergency care provided during the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Federal officials said if hospitals and other providers take emergency funds amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they will be barred from sending balance bills to COVID-19 patients. However, the broad terms HHS uses to describe COVID-19 patients has some analysts interpreting the text as a ban on all surprise billing, according to Kaiser Health News. HHS [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1308,43,70],"tags":[1101],"class_list":["post-13519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cms","category-covid-19","category-hhs","category-insurance","tag-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13521,"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13519\/revisions\/13521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.policymed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}