outrageous emergency room bills

We are, it appears, shocked -- shocked! -- that there are "surprise" bills in healthcare. That is, bills from out-of-network healthcare professionals, even when patients thought they were going to in-network professionals/facilities. The problem is bad enough that even our deeply divided Congress has bipartisan agreement that it should act (although whether it will, of course, remains to be seen). Of course, surprise billing shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows much about healthcare; it is more of a symptom of problems with our healthcare system than a problem itself. Kaiser Health News/NPR deserve much credit for getting more attention for the issue, with their Bill of the Month crowdsourced investigation.

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