The outgoing chair and ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee are calling for changes to the independent dispute resolution process established by the Biden administration as part of the federal No Surprises Act.
In a Nov. 18
bipartisan letter to the Biden administration, the leaders of the committee express serious concerns with the final rule developed by the Biden administration in August 2022.
“Despite a federal district court correctly
ruling that aspects of the interim final regulation were flawed in its implementation of the IDR requirements, we are severely disappointed to find that the August 2022 final rule violates the No Surprises Act in the same ways as before,” wrote Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) and Ranking Member Kevin Brady (R-TX).
WHA and other provider groups have continued to express serious concerns that the
rules as developed by the Biden administration violated the federal laws they were tasked with implementing by unfairly advantaging insurers over health care providers in disputes over billing issues. The federal No Surprises Act was the culmination of multiple years of negotiations by Congressional leaders and was designed to establish a neutral playing field for health care providers and health insurers when they could not agree on the fair amount for out-of-network services provided to patients. Congress designed the law to protect patients from surprise medical bills, while still allowing a path for health care providers to be paid by patient’s health insurers for the services they provided.
In the letter, the House committee members go on to ask the Biden administration to rewrite the portions of the law violating the principals of the No Surprises Act and reissue those portions to align with the statute passed by Congress.
The American Hospital Association and American Medical Association have also filed
friend-of-the-court briefs challenging the final rule as currently written.