Commentary by Sylvia Moore
Imagine you have just gone into the hospital for major surgery. Now imagine weeks later you receive a mysterious request to connect on social media from someone you don’t personally know. It turns out the request is from a debt collector. Worse, the debt collector is claiming you are on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills for that same surgery from an out-of-network provider you didn’t choose.
This horrific story from The Atlantic details how debt collectors tried to wring $50,000 in medical bills out of one New York woman treated by out-of-network doctors while she was in surgery and unconscious. The collectors initially contacted her through LinkedIn, and later inundated her with phone calls and mail for over a year demanding payment.
Surprise medical bills are just another feature of an inherently exploitative healthcare system unique to the United States. And the problem is getting worse. According to a just released study from Stanford University, emergency room patients in 2010 were 32% more likely to have received surprise medical bills. In 2016, that figure rose to just under 43%. Surprise bills often are often caused by payment disputes between an insurance company and physicians, who will take themselves out-of-network to get a higher rate. Patients in an emergency room – and sometimes even in the operating room – don’t often have a choice in who treats them. So you could get hit with a surprise medical bill even if you went to a hospital in your insurance’s network.
California has already banned surprise medical bills from out-of-network doctors that patients didn’t choose while being treated at in-network hospitals, and legislators are moving to expand the same protection to patients who were unknowingly treated at out-of-network hospitals. Even Congress and the Trump administration are considering a nationwide ban on surprise medical bills. However laudable government action is on this problem, it’s only yet another bandage on a system that is still hemorrhaging. It won’t solve the fact that medical bankruptcies are still an issue. With a true, comprehensive universal healthcare system, the concept of “in-network vs. out-of-network” would disappear, and patients wouldn’t be worrying about surprise medical bills in the first place.
–Sylvia Moore
sylvia@heal-ca.org
Sylvia Moore is a Medicare-for-All activist and board member of California OneCare from Los Angeles, California.
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