There is a small but critical victory for American's and
are otherwise very broken healthcare system.
There's a small little glimmer starting January 1st 2022, the new year,
a consumer protection law called the No Surprises Act is coming into effect.
That bans most surprise billing that insurance companies and
others called balance billing.
It's basically when there's all kinds of negotiating behind the scenes between
different hospitals, between different insurance providers, between different
in care and out of care networks and they basically shove the bill your way.
And that is not gonna be allowed going forward.
Even when you're let's say, you're never gonna get that bill that says, my gosh,
you use an out of network service and you were like, what are you talking about?
I am using the hospital, I always use.
This is gonna help ten million Americans and it will apply to, sorry ten million
surprise bills a year, that's how many surprise bills there have been.
So let's read more about the law,
Congress approved it actually in late 2020, after a multitude of delays.
You can only imagine, the lobbyists losing their minds over this.
Protects patients when they receive emergency care or
scheduled treatment from doctors and
hospitals that are not in their insurance networks and that they did not choose.
Oftentimes you kinda just get shunted and given somebody.
Consumers will be responsible only for
their in network cost sharing in these situations.
So again before, that was always the burden of the consumer,
it's not gonna be that burden.
So, as of Jan one, patients shouldn't receive a surprise medical bill from out
of network provider in the following scenarios.
When you receive emergency care, when you receive care in an in network health
facility or when you're transported by an air ambulance.
So, airplane or helicopter.
[LAUGH] Now, I just wanna note that because sadly,
this bill does not cover when you are transported by a ground ambulance.
In other words, the majority of emergency transportation,
which are ground ambulances.
So, let's go to graphic number six,
the No Surprises Act also won't cover ground ambulance transportation
even though you have almost no control over who provides the service.
That means you still might receive an out of network balance for that ambulance.
I wanna go back one and say there's a couple other things that doesn't apply to.
So, addiction treatment facilities, birthing centers,
clinics, hospice, nursing homes, or urgent care centers that are not licensed to
provide emergency services do not apply.
But, ten million less bills that you didn't need, that's huge.
I am scratching my head as to how this is going forward and
my god, is the private insurance company going to lose their minds when it
actually starts to help people.
>> Yeah, well, I have a theory on that.
Because any time a bill that actually helps the American people passes,
it is a massive exception to the rule of corruption in America.
And so, you have to kind of, it's important to diagnose it like what
went right here, how could this have possibly passed?
Almost nothing that helps American people passes through Congress.
And by the way, also note this past a year ago under Trump, right?
Both Democrats and Republicans passed it and he signed it into law.
It's only getting going into effect now.
So, the reason my theory is, this was gonna lead to an actual revolution.
Because people, everyone that I got a surprise bill,
which it was piling up like higher and
higher percentage of Americans were getting hit with a surprise.
But everyone that I talked to was in a rage, an absolute rage.
So think about this, they still have these giant loopholes in this bill, so
ambulances for example.
Well if you're in the middle of an emergency and
you're having a heart attack, are you gonna ask if the ambulance is in network?
Are you gonna even think about that?
That's absurd, right?
And are you gonna negotiate, no, no, I don't want an out of network ambulance
can you send me an ambulance from 28 miles away that's in network?
No, that's still not addressing this bill.
So, you take an ambulance and you're playing with your financial life cuz they
send your bills for 2000 bucks, 4000 bucks, 8000 bucks.
It's just literal highway robbery,
you're getting robbed on the highway on the way to the hospital.
And this bill does not cover non emergencies at all.
So you're still gonna go in, let's say you're taking a cat scan, there's like, we
sent the lab results to an out of network facility, we never told you, you never
asked, you never had any opportunities, here is your bill for $21,000.
Well, they don't have you but what the people powerful people don't understand is
they then think, well, I would just call my friend who's a senator.
And I would have to say cuz that's an outrage,
I'll have it taken care of, right?
No, [LAUGH] 99.9% of people don't have a senator friend to call they're screwed,
they're gonna lose their house, they're gonna be homeless.
So no, they're playing with our lives.
And when you see stuff like this,
I don't think it's at all a surprise that there was a riot against our capitol.
Okay, now people might find that controversial, but I think the right wing
lost its mind because of corporate rule and the corporate media that protects it.
Like guys think about it, man, yeah, okay, the Trump guys are an occult, but
if you listen to Mainstream media, are you sure you're not an occult?
Because Mainstream media says, yeah,
the surprise bills where they ruin your life on a thing that you couldn't possibly
control at your weakest most desperate moment, that makes sense they say.
Medicare for all, universal health care coverage, which every other developed
nation has everything, they say that does not make sense.
No, you must pay these random ransoms to these insurance
corporations, otherwise we're going to let you die.
That is not normal, you'd have to be insane to believe that, and
that is Mainstream media.
>> Yes and this is one small piece, I mean two years ago I did something for
Mainstream media which was an hour long special on MSNBC looking at health care.
And I spoke to a woman whose son mysteriously fell ill and
she had like 11 different bills from different places.
They went to one hospital, but like the third floor was not in network, but
the sixth floor was, but the eighth floor wasn't.
And so, when people get sick in this country, they are slammed with so
many bills from different kinds of basically private providers, right?
That they didn't even know were out of their network, cuz they're often largely
never told, you're never told also how much things cost.
If you've ever asked, like, hey, how much is a mammogram? Nobody knows, but
you're stuck with the bill no matter what, just so you know how widespread this is.
As Jenks was saying, it's important to mention that 1 in 5 currently,
1 in 5 emergency room visits and up to 1 in 6 in network hospitalizations,
include at least one surprise out of network bill.
So, patients can be hit with more than $1200 on average, for which is very low.
For anesthesiologist services, $2600 for surgical assistance and
$750 for childbirth-related care.
And that is again, we've heard horror stories that are way worse than that.
So, it is a step in the right direction after what we've been through in
the pandemic, I think we deserve far more, i.e Medicare for all if not better.
But I don't know guys when you're being, attended to in,
if you've had an accident, just make sure you ask for
the sky ambulance, ask for the chopper, not the regular one.
I don't know how you do that,- >> Yeah.
>> But try to remember.
>> No, the third floor being in network on the sixth floor not being in network
is Kafka ask.
They're driving us out of our minds and
they're the number one culprit is Cable News,
New York times etcetera that looks at and goes, no, this is how it should be.
And you should be surprised with a bill,
you can't possibly pay and and if you can't pay it you should die.
That's normal.
No one else does it that, I'm here wakey, wakey,
I'm gonna try to snap you out of the cult of the Mainstream,
literally no other civilized country allows their citizens to die.
We are alone, we are the only country and
by the way, we're also the richest country.
But nonetheless, we allow our citizens to die if they can't
afford cancer treatment, that's insane, that is not normal.
And we do these surprise billing, which again at your worst possible time and
we absolutely drive our citizens to ruin.
I feel like we're constantly in that Star Wars scene where
the garbage vault is closing in and that's what corporate rule is.
And I'm telling you the reason and this bill is half good as we explain.
And that's why we're explaining a minor miracle that we got a half good bill out
of Congress.
And the reason is, cuz you wanna leave just a little bit, so
we're not crushed to death.
Because if the vault closes too much, well, we're their cash cows,
they're milking us until we're dry and they don't wanna kill the cow, right?
So that's why you got this half measure out of Congress, so
that we don't have a literal revolution.
But that's coming, and I don't want it to come, but
the greed of corporate rule is infinite.