Opinion: To fight surprise medical bills, create a powerful united patient lobby
Physicians are taught to prioritize the interests of their patients, using their knowledge, preferences, and values to guide clinical decisions. Political decisions about the U.S. health care system tend to take the reverse perspective: prioritizing the interests of everyone else — pharmaceutical companies, insurers, hospitals, and physicians — above patients.
This backward approach is exemplified this month as hospitals support a new proposal about surprise medical bills introduced by the House Ways and Means Committee. The proposal lets physicians determine the rates of expensive surprise bills through arbitration or negotiation with patients’ insurance companies. That’s bad for patients.
