California Healthline March 27, 2024
Emergency room doctors say insurers are increasingly declining to cover costly air-ambulance rides for critically ill patients, claiming they aren’t medically necessary. And the National Association of EMS Physicians says the No Surprises Act, enacted in 2022, is partly to blame.
The law protects patients from many out-of-network medical bills by requiring insurers and providers to haggle over fair payment. But insurers can sidestep the law if they determine care is “not medically necessary” — and insurers themselves get to decide what that means.
In the fall of 2022, Sara England of Salinas, Calif., learned about this firsthand when ER doctors at a hospital in her town had her 3-month-old, Amari, transferred by air to the University of California at...
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