Washington – The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) joined coalition allies in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Specialty Care Inc., et al. v. Aetna, Inc., and three related appeals against Cigna Healthcare, UMR, and Meritain Health. The brief urges the court to affirm the district courts’ rulings and reject providers’ attempts to sue health plans over payment disputes arising from the No Surprises Act’s (NSA) arbitration process.
The NSA arbitration process, known as Independent Dispute Resolution (IDR), was designed to resolve payment disputes between health plans and providers without involving the courts. Instead, a small number of provider staffing firms and IDR “middlemen” have flooded the system with claims, many never eligible for arbitration, driving disputes to more than 2.5 million in 2025 alone and payouts to nearly $15 billion. The plaintiffs want courts to let providers sue health plans directly once a payment lags past 30 days, bypassing the administrative process Congress created to handle these disputes.
“Congress gave regulators, not the courts, the job of sorting out payment problems in this arbitration system,” said Doug Hinson, Executive Director of the ERIC Legal Center. “Providers and staffing firms are already gaming this process by filing hundreds of thousands of claims that were never eligible for arbitration in the first place. Giving them a green light to sue in federal court on top of that would only invite more abuse, and employers and their workers would end up paying for it through higher premiums.”
The brief argues that an alleged right to sue encourages behavior Congress worked to prevent: inundating the legal system with disputes, including ineligible ones, to extract higher payments. Existing administrative remedies already secure relief for providers with legitimate claims, without the cost and delay of litigation. Adding a judicial fix on top would only increase costs passed on to employers, workers, and their families who rely on employer-sponsored coverage.
Read the full brief here.