Surprise billing’s death-spiral may suck in untold patients

The best time to kill Envision Healthcare was before it started (the second best time is now).

The most remarkable thing about the surprise billing crisis is that its architects thought they could get away with it. Back in 2018, KKR (slogan: “Integrity. Trust. Partnership”) bought Envision Health with a plan to make billions through Emergency Room fraud.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

Here’s how surprise billing works: a company like Envision convinces a hospital to let its emergency room doctors form a private company that doesn’t take any insurance (especially not the insurance the hospital accepts). When gravely injured, seriously ill, unconscious and dying people present at the ER, they are tricked into signing paperwork saying they’ll pay whatever Envision charges.

Now, the AMA bans non-doctors from owning medical practices, so nominally all of these private “doctors’ groups” are run by ER doctors. The true owners, though, are private equity looters — you can tell, because whenever one of these “doctor-owners” objects to an inhumane practice, they’re summarily fired: