Monday, February 8, 2021
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, signed by President Trump on December 27, 2020, included within its over 5,900 pages the controversial and long-debated No Surprises Act (the Act), addressing surprise medical bills. The Act seeks to protect patients from unexpected medical bills for out-of-network services they receive, and also establishes an arbitration system for resolving billing disputes between out-of-network health care providers and payers. The Act takes effect on January 1, 2022, and it is anticipated that regulations will be adopted to clarify a number of provisions in the Act prior to that time. New Jersey health care providers and insurers are already subject to the Out-of-Network Consumer Protection, Transparency, Cost Containment and Accountability Act (the New Jersey Act), which was passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Murphy in 2018, and is similar in several significant aspects to the federal Act. This a