No matter how a patient's health plan responds to an out-of-network bill, the result is higher costs for consumers. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Patients would save billions of dollars a year if medical specialists were not allowed to bill out-of-network rates.

An analysis of 2015 data obtained from a "large commercial insurer" showed that a significant percentage of medical services were billed out-of-network, including 11.8 percent of anesthesiology care, 12.3 percent for care involving a pathologist, 5.6 percent of claims for radiologists, and 11.3 percent of cases involving an assistant surgeon.

According to the research, reported earlier this week in Health Affairs, if out-of-network billing were eliminated, overall payments to doctors would decrease by 13.4 percent and patient spending on health care would drop 3.4 percent, or by roughly $40 billion annually.