Florida and California move to shield consumers from surprise medical bills

CAL/AAEM News Service calaaem.news.service1 at gmail.com
Thu May 5 11:08:10 PDT 2016


       

 

April 8, 2016

 

Florida and California move to shield consumers from surprise medical bills 

 

 

 
<http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160408/NEWS/160409899?utm_source=
modernhealthcare&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160408-NEWS-160409899&utm_ca
mpaign=financedaily> Modern Healthcare

 

 

By Harris Meyer

 

Florida is poised to become the second big state after New York to shield
patients from surprise out-of-network medical bills, and California may not
be far behind if lawmakers there can cinch a similar deal with physicians.

 

The issue has caught fire around the country, with even health professionals
facing the personal experience of unexpected bills for hundreds or thousands
of dollars. Consumers Union reported last year that among people who had
emergency department visits, hospitalizations or operations in the previous
two years, 37% received a bill for which their health plan paid less than
expected; among those who received a surprise bill, nearly 1 out of 4 got a
bill from a doctor they did not expect to get a bill from.

 

Legislators and insurance officials in Georgia, Hawaii, Missouri, New Jersey
and Pennsylvania are studying the issue or considering legislation. "It's
not a red or blue issue, it's really bipartisan," said Betsy Imholz, special
projects director at Consumers Union. "Every legislator and staffer
understands it and often has been a victim of it."

 

Nearly everyone agrees that patients who unwittingly receive services from
out-of-network providers at in-network facilities should be protected from
these bills. The political holdup is determining how much to pay the
out-of-network providers. Florida sidestepped the payment issue by leaving
that up to a yet-to-be-developed dispute resolution process, while
California is still trying to resolve that conflict.

 

Florida's Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bipartisan bill (PDF)
last month that would protect patients from paying balance bills from
out-of-network providers in both emergency and non-emergency situations.
This would apply when the patients go to a healthcare facility in their
health plan network and inadvertently receive services from a non-network
provider. Patients would only be responsible for paying their usual
in-network cost-sharing.

 

Plans and non-participating providers would have to work out payment for
those services through a state-arranged, voluntary dispute resolution
process, with a penalty assessed to the party that refused to accept an
offer that was close to the final arbitration order. The negotiation would
be based on the usual and customary rate for the particular geographic area.
Disputes could be taken to court. The bill would only apply to PPO-type
plans, since Florida already bars balance billing patients in HMOs.

 

New York implemented a similar, though mandatory, dispute resolution system
last spring, requiring insurers and providers to resolve out-of-network
payment disputes while holding patients harmless.

 

Republican Gov. Rick Scott has until April 14 to decide whether to sign the
bill, which has strong support from the state's chief financial officer, a
key member of Scott's cabinet. The Florida Medical Association and other
major stakeholder groups are backing the bill, though anesthesiology and
radiology groups oppose it. The Florida Hospital Association said it agrees
"with the general direction of the legislation." Scott's office did not
return a call for comment.

 

The Florida Association of Health Plans said surprise out-of-network bills
are the No. 1 consumer healthcare complaint. "This is the most comprehensive
consumer protection legislation in the country on (this issue), and our
association is proud to support it," said Audrey Brown, the association's
CEO. "The stakeholders came together and agreed to remove patients from the
middle of disputes between insurers and providers."

 

Jeff Scott, general counsel of the Florida Medical Association, said the
bill was an acceptable compromise for most physicians even though the real
problem is that insurers don't fully inform consumers what they're buying.
"Physicians shouldn't have been involved, but that's how it ended up and
it's a reasonable approach," he said.

 

Meanwhile, in California, a broad coalition of payers, unions, consumer
advocates, and some providers are backing a similar bipartisan bill that
nearly passed the Legislature late last year and now is being considered in
amended form.

 

The bill would establish a binding independent dispute resolution process
for insurers and providers in cases where patients received care from
out-of-network providers at in-network facilities. Patients would only have
to pay their normal in-network cost sharing, and those payments, unlike now,
would apply to their plan's out-of-pocket yearly limits. The proposed system
would apply only to non-emergency care, since emergency physicians already
are barred from balance billing patients under a prior state Supreme Court
ruling.

 

But the California Medical Association strongly opposes the bill, arguing
that it would hinder consumers' ability to use their plans' out-of-network
benefits and give plans too much negotiating leverage over physicians. The
CMA did not provide comment for this article.

 

The California Hospital Association is neutral on the bill. A CHA
spokeswoman said that while patients often blame hospitals for
out-of-network bills, there's little hospitals can do because state law bars
them from employing doctors or requiring them to join particular health
plans, plus hospitals have no way of knowing when hospital-based physician
groups will use a non-participating physician on an on-call basis.

 

Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, which
sponsored the bill, said the political obstacle so far is that the CMA wants
generous guaranteed payment rates for out-of-network physicians. But payers
say those would be higher than market-based negotiated rates and would drive
up costs.

 

Still, he predicts the bill will pass this session, which ends Aug. 31,
because public pressure is mounting. "When people get these bills, it makes
everyone look bad, and there's a common interest in getting this resolved."

 

 

 

Jeff Wells
Deputy Editor, CAL/AAEM News Service

 

Brian Potts MD, MBA
Managing Editor, CAL/AAEM News Service



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