This company made billions by surprise-billing helpless ER patients. Then justice arrived

Some businesses deserve sympathy when they land in bankruptcy. Then there's Envision.

The Tennessee company prospered as a provider of medical staff to hospitals around the country. It concentrated on emergency physicians, anesthesiologists and radiologists for a simple reason: Their patients typically had no ability to pick and choose among these doctors when they need care.

Waiting to be seen at the emergency room or already laid out on an operating table, the patients weren't in a position to ask whether the doctor was in their insurance plan's network.

These higher payment rates [are] caused not by supply or demand, but rather by the ability to "ambush" the patient."
Zack Cooper et al, Yale University
They might not even know they were seen by out-of-network doctors until they received a bill for their services — a surprise invoice for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Envision's "secret sauce was to pile medical debt on people with emergencies," says Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonprofit Washington think tank. "That was purely taking advantage of people at their most vulnerable time."

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The No Surprises Act blew a sizable hole in Envision's profit-and-loss statement — part of "a whiplash-inducing onslaught of obstacles and complications" facing the firm's management, its bankruptcy filing stated.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/column-this-company-made-billions-by-surprise-billing-helpless-er-patients-then-justice-arrived/ar-AA1bCv1Q