Health Law and Regulation Update Blog Post by Eric Frisch.

Yesterday the Georgia Senate passed and adopted HB 888, which limits the consequences of “surprise” medical billing for patients receiving emergency medical services. The bill limits the remedies for out of network service providers to collect from patients on past due bills to the deductible or co-pay. Once the patient pays the deductible or co-pay, the service providers can only collect any out of network balance from health insurers. The bill also requires insurers to pay for out of network emergency services without prior authorization and to cover certain non-emergency services as well. The patient remains financially responsible for out of network services they choose to receive.

This bill requires a deeper dive and more analysis will follow, but it seems to be ambiguous enough that significant litigation is likely to follow. Stay tuned for more analysis.

The text of the bill can be found by clicking here.

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