Inside STAT: A flawed fix for surprise medical bills?

As Congress tries to address the problem of surprise medical bills, there’s a new warning that lawmakers could push doctors to leave insurance networks. In a First Opinion piece for STAT, Dr. James Rickert, an orthopedist and president of the Society for Patient Centered Orthopedics, argues that an arbitration solution under consideration — under which an arbiter would resolve disputes over these bills, typically paying out-of-network providers more than the in-network rate — provides an incentive for doctors to flee these networks and bill patients directly. A better approach, Rickert says, is through “benchmarking” out-of-network rates. Read the piece here.