Then-President Donald Trump signed the No Surprises Act into law in December 2020, and it went into effect on January 1 this year. The law protects patients from the most pervasive types of surprise out-of-network bills and creates a new federal independent dispute resolution (IDR) process to resolve payment disputes between payers and out-of-network providers. As one might expect, not everyone is happy with the new rules.
Several providers have taken issue with the implementation of the federal IDR process have sued the Biden administration over two interim final rules. The first lawsuit was filed last October by the Texas Medical Association and a Texas-based emergency room physician in the eastern district of Texas. The second was filed in November by the Association of Air Medical Services in the District of Columbia.