Early in January, the California High Court banned emergency room doctors from directly billing insured patients, after their HMOs refused to pay their emergency medical care bills. The High Court has decided that doctors should not be allowed to take up the issue with patients if they believe they’ve been shortchanged by the patient’s HMO.

This new ruling affects around 21 million people, providing them with protection if they are treated by emergency room doctors who are not covered by their HMO plan.

The issue centers around a practice called balance billing. Sometimes, HMOs don’t cover the entirely of an emergency treatment bill, typically because the doctor used by the policy holder isn’t covered by the HMO’s plan. In these cases, the doctor concerned normally directly bills the patient who received the treatment.

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