An emergency room visit led to open-heart surgery in New York earlier this year, leaving him with a stack of medical bills, including a $32,000 surgeon fee he wasn’t sure how he was going to pay.
But then he discovered a recently enacted New York law that restricts out-of-network providers from “balance billing” consumers for emergency care or when patients cannot choose their doctors.
The law went into effect just as Trost’s medical bills began rolling in and he did not have to pay the balance. That would not be the case had the 52-year-old Dingmans Ferry, Pike County, resident had had his surgery in Pennsylvania.