“The Save Our Air Medical Resources (SOAR) Campaign supports efforts to protect patients from balance bills and ensure access to life-saving emergency air medical care. We urge Congress to get to the root of the problem by fixing Medicare’s chronic under-reimbursement for air medical services, and we call on insurance companies to do right by their patients and consistently cover this emergency service.
“Last year, Congress took a step in the right direction when it directed the U.S. Department of Transportation to collect data from the air medical industry and develop recommendations for improving disclosure, informing consumers of insurance options, and protecting patients from balance billing. We support this work and want it to succeed. Adding a new billing requirement to separate the health care and transportation aspects of an emergency air medical transport would be a step backward, however. Not only is such a separation impossible due to the nature of the service, it would do nothing to protect patients from balance bills or lower costs.
“We applaud the Subcommittee for taking up this issue and look forward to working with it to preserve access to emergency air medical services and protect patients from balance bills.”