Eligibility Decisions Seen as Hardest Part of No Surprises Act

Determining which health-care payment disputes are eligible for arbitration under the No Surprises Act has turned out to be the hardest part of the process, a Treasury official said Thursday.

“The eligibility piece has turned out to be much more complicated than anticipated,” Linda Mendel, attorney-adviser in the Treasury Department’s Office of Benefits Tax Counsel, said at the District of Columbia Bar Taxation Community’s 2023 Tax Legislative and Regulatory Update.

Between April 15 and Sept. 30, 2022, more than 90,000 disputes were initiated between health-care providers and payers such as health insurers and employer health plans—"significantly more” than what the ...