Billing patients directly for services an insurer won’t cover is critical to the business model for air ambulance providers, industry executives said during the first meeting of a federal advisory committee.
The practice known as “balance billing,” which lawmakers are debating whether to outlaw, is a rarely used but important tool for collecting fees from commercially insured patients, who account for most air ambulance company revenue despite being a minority of the population they serve, the operators said.
Billing for air ambulance services is emerging as a point of contention in Congress.
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David Motzkin, president of the air ambulance company PHI Health, said billing patients directly is essential to “get the level of ...