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Austin, TX — With the support of State Rep. Erin Zwiener, the Texas House gave the go-ahead today on legislation to protect Texans from surprise medical bills. Usually occurring during emergency-related care, surprise medical bills happen when patients don’t realize they’ve seen an out-of-network provider. Senate Bill 1264 by Sen. Kelly Hancock relieves Texans hit with unexpected medical bills by removing the patient from medical billing disputes and instead requiring the providers and insurance companies to negotiate remaining healthcare balances.
“Today is a victory for patients across Texas who have too often come home from the hospital and received a surprise medical bill in the mail just a few weeks later,” Rep. Zwiener said. “By removing patients from the process, we are allowing the accountants to do their job while patients focus on recovery.”
Under current law, patients must initiate the mediation process by requesting formal intervention by the Texas Department of Insurance. As the mediation requests for balance billing have increased over the years, TDI has seen a backlog of cases. SB 1264 would diminish these backlogs by taking patients out of that process. Rep. Zwiener is a coauthor on the House companion, HB 3933.
“Attempting to navigate the medical billing process while recovering from an illness or injury only makes patients’ health and stress worse,” Rep. Zwiener said. “With this bipartisan legislation, we are creating a simpler system so patients can avoid the surprise and burden of being slapped with high costs later down the line.”
