| By Carolyn Y. Johnson It's one of modern medicine's most frustrating riddles: A person gets sick. She knows how tricky health insurance can be, so she does the smart thing. She goes to a hospital covered by her plan — "in-network," in the parlance of health care. She gets well. Weeks later, she opens her mail and feels … | | |  | | | | The latest economic and domestic policy from Wonkblog | | | | |  (Jason Redmond/Associated Press) By Carolyn Y. Johnson It's one of modern medicine's most frustrating riddles: A person gets sick. She knows how tricky health insurance can be, so she does the smart thing. She goes to a hospital covered by her plan — "in-network," in the parlance of health care. She gets well. Weeks later, she opens her mail and feels unwell again: An unexpected bill that puts her on the hook for hundreds of extra dollars because, it says, some of the care she got was out-of-network. How could this be? The answer is simple but frustrating. Doctors who work in hospitals agree to accept certain kinds of insurance. Those may — or may not — be the same insurers that their hospital has decided to accept. That can leave patients with a bill for the rest. Although the problem has been chronicled for years, the scale was unknown. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday found that "surprise billing," when patients unexpectedly find themselves paying for out-of-network care, was common. Researchers examined 2.2 million medical claims covering emergency department visits from an undisclosed large health insurance company over nearly two years. While 99 percent of the visits were in-network, a fifth included treatment by out-of-network emergency physicians. | | | Zack Cooper, a health economist at Yale University who led the work, said that he was shocked by the result.
Read the rest on Wonkblog.
Top policy tweets | | | | | | | | | | |
|
|
|
| ©2016 The Washington Post, 1301 K St NW, Washington DC 20071 | | | | | | | | |
Twitter
Facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment