In an August 15 Morning Consult Op-ed, SBE Council president & CEO Karen Kerrigan and health care expert and consultant Katy Talento, who formerly served as the top health policy advisor to President Donald J. Trump on the Domestic Policy Council, wrote about the ills of “surprise medical billing” and what needs to be done to bring market discipline to this shady business model. Federally mandated binding arbitration is not one of the “reforms” to resolve the issue, writes Kerrigan and Talento:
“Arbitration would involve a mediator who fixes the price, based on the sky-high, secret rates that some doctors are currently enjoying.
“This is why most conservatives and business groups, along with the Trump Administration, reject federally mandated arbitration outright. Some conservatives, however, have argued that any attempt to rein in price-gouging in these situations constitutes government price controls and moves us closer to a single payer health care system.
“That’s nonsense. In fact, if we fail to appropriately address issues like surprise billing – which is a failure of the market made possibly only by hiding price and network status information from consumers– then we give single payer advocates an effective talking-point against the private system.”
Read the full op-ed here.
