A small, necessary piece of health care reform is hitching a ride on the COVID-19 relief bill

It’s amazing what can happen in end of the year legislative wrangling. For two years, Congress has had multiple bipartisan proposals to end the practice of surprise medical billing, proposals that went nowhere because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted on doing a minimum of actual legislating. Now, however, in the amalgam of coronavirus relief and 2021 spending, it is happening. Finally.

Surprise billing has cost American consumers billions over the years. It happens when one of the medical providers involved in patient care isn’t in the patient’s insurance network. A hospital might be in an insurance network, but the doctors and lab techs and anesthesiologists working there might not, and people have been having to fork up the payments for their services, even though the hospital they were at was in their insurance network. Everybody wanted to see this end, but the powerful healthcare lobbying groups who have been passing the hot potato of who actually has to pay—insurance, providers, hospitals—have leaned heavily into not letting it happen. The flurry of negotiations in Congress over this massive package just swept that away. So as of the passage of this legislation, surprise billing will be illegal. Or will be in 2022.