CBO’s Approach to Estimating the Budgetary Effects of the No Surprises Act of 2021

Presentation by Daria Pelech, an analyst in CBO’s Health Analysis Division, at the Center for Health Insurance Reform McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University.

Summary

This presentation describes CBO’s approach to estimating the budgetary effects of the No Surprises Act. The stated aim of the No Surprises Act was to protect patients from surprise billing. The law:

• Established protections for patients receiving out-of-network care,
• Established an arbitration process for resolving payment disputes, and
• Directed arbiters to consider the qualifying payment amount, defined as the median in-network rate, as the benchmark for payment (with other factors).

CBO projected that reductions in prices paid to providers would reduce insurers’ costs, in turn reducing premiums by roughly 1 percent and reducing federal deficits from 2021 to 2030 by a total of $17 billion.