Unanimous Resolution Applauds Sen. Bill Cassidy’s Leadership to Introduce STOP Surprise Medical Bills Act
Baton Rouge, LA – Today, the Republican Party of Louisiana unanimously approved a resolution calling for the federal adoption of Independent Dispute Resolution (IDR), often referred to as baseball-styled arbitration, a free-market solution to stop the practice of surprise medical billing.
It also applauds U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) for his leadership in authoring the STOP Surprise Medical Bills Act and “encourages the entire Louisiana congressional delegation to continue fighting for a legislative solution that encourages free-market-solutions such as the IDR framework and not government rate setting via benchmarking.”
Surprise medical billing occurs when patients receive unexpected and excessive medical bills for health care services that they believed would be covered by their insurance companies.
“Surprise medical billing is driving up the cost of health care for everyone, and a free-market resolution like IDR is the only proven way to solve the problem without unintentionally making it even worse for patients. Some proposals out there – like government price-setting – would do exactly that by limiting patients’ ability to get care close to home from the doctors they trust,” said Louis Gurvich, Chairman of the Republican Party of Louisiana.
Authored by SCC member Lloyd Harsch, the resolution was unanimously approved by the party’s executive committee during today’s Republican State Central Committee meeting.
“The party chose to highlight this issue because it is a critical part of increasing transparency for patients and lowering the costs of healthcare for millions of Americans,” Gurvich added.
The full text of the resolution is available HERE.
