{"id":24662,"date":"2025-07-18T08:16:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T12:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/?p=24662"},"modified":"2025-07-18T08:16:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T12:16:19","slug":"surprise-medical-bills-were-supposed-to-be-a-thing-of-the-past-surprise-theyre-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/?p=24662","title":{"rendered":"Surprise Medical Bills Were Supposed To Be a Thing of the Past. Surprise \u2014 They\u2019re Not."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(By Elisabeth Rosenthal for KFF Health News)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year in Massachusetts, after finding lumps in her breast, Jessica Chen went to Lowell General Hospital-Saints Campus, part of Tufts Medicine, for a mammogram and sonogram. Before the screenings, she asked the hospital for the estimated patient responsibility for the bill using her insurance, Tufts Health Plan. Her portion, she was told, would be $359 \u2014 and she paid it. She was more than a little surprised weeks later to receive a bill asking her to pay an additional $1,677.51. \u201cI was already trying to stomach $359, and this was many times higher,\u201d Chen, a physician assistant, told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The No Surprises Act, which took effect in 2022, was rightly heralded as a landmark piece of legislation, which \u201cprotects people covered under group and individual health plans from receiving surprise medical bills,\u201d according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And yet bills that take patients like Chen by surprise just keep coming. Continue reading here…<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health polity news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice:<\/strong>\u00a0The link provided above connects readers to the full content of the posted article. The URL (internet address) for this link is valid on the posted date; medicarereport.org cannot guarantee the duration of the link\u2019s validity. Also, the opinions expressed in these postings are the viewpoints of the original source and are not explicitly endorsed by AMAC, Inc.; the AMAC Foundation, Inc.; or medicarereport.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(By Elisabeth Rosenthal for KFF Health News) Last year in Massachusetts, after finding lumps in her breast, Jessica Chen went<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,21,200,56],"tags":[80,238,216,315],"class_list":["post-24662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cms","category-health-care-finance","category-health-insurance","category-medical-debt","tag-cms","tag-healthcare-finance","tag-medical-debt","tag-surprise-health-care-bills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24663,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24662\/revisions\/24663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}