While President Donald Trump finished his first mandate in 2020, he signed legislation to protect Americans against surprised medical bills. “It must end,” said Trump. “We are going to keep the insurance companies and the fully responsible hospitals.”
But the president’s great push to reduce public spending, led by billionaire Elon Musk, weakens the federal office responsible for implementing the law on surprises.
According to the former Deputy Director of the Agency, some 15% of people working at the Federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Outsiigh, or CCIIO, or the CCIIO, or the CCIIO, or the CCIIO, or the CCIIO, or the CCIIO, was dismissed at the Federal Center for consumer information and insurope
And while the full impact of discounts is still highlighted, the dismissal threatens work in an agency that is already working to manage a system that is too extensive to sometimes resolve very large invoices from medical suppliers out of network.
“It’s a hot waste,” said Grant about job cuts in an interview with Kff Health News. “Chaos has put everyone in a tailpin.”
The cuts, which have affected 82 of the employees of the Federal Office, are also likely to delay the new critical rules designed to accelerate the process of judging disputes on surprise invoices between health plans and medical providers.
Grant, who was the highest responsible for the career at the CCIIO, retired last week after 41 years of government. He criticized layoffs as a “serious error” in a strongly formulated letter To the Director of Acting Human Resources, by criticizing him for having cut jobs in regard to the qualifications of the employees or the needs of the agency.
Health insurers have also raised concerns about maintaining the agency’s work on surprise bills.
A spokesperson for the Federal Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, who oversees the CCIIO, said that the Federal Agency did. “CMS undertakes to enforce the law on the NO on surprises, and the agency continues to move forward with this important work,” said Catherine Howden.
The CCIIO, a small part of the Federal Health Agency, was created by the 2010 affordable care law and responsible for ensuring that health insurance plans meet the standards established by law to protect patients.
After the Congress adopted the surprises law in 2020, the office assumed additional responsibility for the implementation and administration of the complex process to protect patients against surprised bills.
Work attracted the support of Democrats and Republicans, who had been flooded with stories of patients struck by huge bills of emergency doctors, anesthesiologists and other suppliers who were not in patient insurance networks, even when patients received care in network hospitals.
“We are going to end surprise medical billing,” Promise Trump On the campaign track In 2020. “The days of tearing patients were completed.”
The law has prohibited medical providers in most cases to continue patients on surprise bills. This prohibition is not directly affected by recent job cuts ordered by the Musk’s Ministry of Effectiveness, created by Trump by a decree.
But the CCIIO had worked to rationalize a system established by the law on surprises to resolve disagreements between health plans and medical providers on over -network bills. This key protection has been implemented so that patients are not captured in the middle of billing disputes.
The system, known as the independent dispute settlement, or IDR, was flooded hundreds of thousands of cases. In 2023, more than 650,000 new disputes were deposited, according to A recent analysis Posted in the journal Health Affairs.
“The surprise law has protected millions of Americans to receive surprise medical invoices,” said Jennifer Jones, who directs the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s legislative policy, an insurance trade group. “But the problems with the independent dispute settlement process,” she added, “increases costs for patients and employers.”
A consumer declaration system has also been overwhelmed to allow patients to file complaints if they believe they have been unjustly targeted with a surprise bill.
Under the former president Joe Biden, the CCIIO had worked on new rules to make the settlement of disputes more effective, which, according to experts, would make a difference.
“If this rule becomes definitive and works as well as expected, it should help more on -network complaints,” said Jack Hoadley, emeritus research teacher at Georgetown University, who studied surprise medical billing.
But the new rules were not completed before Biden left the office. And the senior official supervising this work left his job in January. The recent cuts struck the remaining CCIIO employees working on the NO law on surprises, according to Grant and other familiar sources with layoffs, which have asked not to be identified for fear of professional reprisals.
Grant said that senior CCIIO officials have since been able to move certain employees and have obtained permission to recall that some of the 82 people have dropped. But he said that there was no guarantee that everyone will want to return to the reduced agency.
Even more worrying, said Grant, are deeper cuts than the White House told the federal agencies to prepare by March 13.
“These cuts were quite bad,” said Grant. “What’s going on will be even more important.”
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