Congress passed the No Surprises Act in 2020 to protect patients from receiving unexpectedly high medical bills.
Yet patients may still get hospital charges that seem unreasonably high or are difficult to understand. More than 5 million billing disputes have been registered with the federal government since the law took effect in 2022.
One reason may be that the law applies in limited circumstances dealing with out-of-network providers and emergency services and does not apply to all services.
Since 2020, a number of states have enacted their own patient protection laws to address surprise charges, price transparency, and other common complaints about medical billing, some going further than the federal law….