Medical Debt

via the White House website:

Vice President Harris announces actions to protect consumers and reduce hurdles that prevent individuals from receiving relief from medical bills
 
White House hosts roundtable with Americans impacted by medical debt, including those who received medical debt relief through Biden-Harris Administration actions

via the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS):

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration (the Administration), through the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and the Treasury (the Departments), along with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), released a proposed rule on the No Surprises Act’s Federal independent dispute resolution (IDR) process.

In late 2020 after years of bipartisan attempts to tackle one of the uglier problems with the U.S. healthcare system, Congress somehow ended up quietly slipping in a bill which resolved a large chunk of the issue with minimal fanfare:

Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz have written an excellent summary of the problem and the proposed solution:

Surprise bills happen when an out-of-network provider is unexpectedly involved in a patient’s care. Patients go to a hospital that accepts their insurance, for example, but get treated there by an emergency room physician who doesn’t. Such doctors often bill those patients for large fees, far higher than what health plans typically pay.