When you land in the emergency room, navigating your complicated health insurance is often the last thing on your mind. But even if you have to foresight to go to a hospital covered by your plan, not every doctor who interacts with you may be in that same network, potentially leaving you with a surprise bill later on.
In new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a pair of Yale University economists wanted to find out the scope of surprise emergency room billing in the U.S. They looked at 2014-2015 claims data from an unidentified large commercial insurer, capturing 2.2 million visits to ERs across the country for people under age 65, totaling about $7 billion in emergency care.
