canny investments in lawmakers yielded valuable dividends. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richie Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, scotched a proposal that would have greatly restricted surprise billing via the tried-and-true legislative strategy of advancing his own, weaker bill. In place of price regulation, he substituted an arbitration system to settle billing disputes. The arbitrator would use as a reference point the rates paid in recent years—effectively locking in the jacked-up fees extracted by the private equity companies. And even that bill was delayed by a year.
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