In 2019 Texas passed a sweeping consumer protection law to curb surprise medical bills in emergency situations or when patients have no choice in who treated them. It was designed to fight a business practice called balance billing, where out-of-network doctors and health care facilities can charge significantly higher amounts than the in-network negotiated rates and then shift whatever the insurer does not pay onto patients. There was a notable exception to the new law: ambulances. By the industry’s own estimate, up to 90 percent of its ambulance services in Texas are outside at least some major insurance networks, if not all, according to the president of the Texas Ambulance Association.
Read Article: Houston Chronicle
From the Texas Trial Lawyers Association news release.
