Sen. Maggie Hassan: 'No More Medical Surprises'

Chris Riback's Conversations

So you’re in a restaurant. Great meal. The bill comes, and it’s got a surprise – an unexpected $10 charge because, well it turns out your entrée required a special ingredient the server forgot to mention. Would you pay it? Would you expect to have to pay it?
Now look at our health care. You go to the Emergency Room. They take your insurance. Only it turns out, your in-network ER is being staffed by out-of-network providers. Suddenly, in addition to the surprise of having landed in the ER in the first place, you’ve got thousands of dollars in surprise medical costs.
What you wouldn’t stand for in a restaurant can happen any day in an emergency room – and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan wants to do something about it.
Sen. Hassan has introduced a bill titled the “No More Medical Surprises Act.” As you’ll hear, her bill aims not only to protect patients from the outrageous bills that suddenly land folks deep in medical debt, she borrows from baseball to find a market-based solution to the problem. And no, that doesn’t involve using a baseball bat… though I bet she wishes it could.
While I had Sen. Hassan for the conversation, I also wanted to take the opportunity to ask about another important and divisive issue that – like health care – went to the heart of the recent Midterm elections: Border Security and Immigration. Sen. Hassan sits on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and I wanted to know: Do Democrats have a clear message on border security and immigration?
In our extraordinarily partisan times, is it reasonable to hope for agreement on a health care bill? What about immigration? You’ll want to hear Sen. Hassan’s answers.