Health Care Alert

Damaging Indiana House Bill Scheduled!

Rep. Peggy Welch (D-Bloomington) has introduced House Bill 1022. It will be heard Wednesday, January 13, at 3:30 p.m. in the House Health Committee. The bill allows health care providers who are under contractual arrangements with insurers to limit the number of patients they will accept from any particular insurer. Under current law, they cannot limit the number of patients nor discriminate in any way. They can either decline to accept any more patients from all payment sources or accept all new patients, but they cannot cherry pick or discriminate. The practical effect of the bill, as it is introduced, is to allow health care providers to choose who to treat for any variety of reasons, but most particularly based upon who their insurer is and whether the health care provider can then maximize his/her  reimbursement by eliminating some covered insureds from in-network treatment. This bill will affect all managed care networks whether your employees' health plan is fully insured or self-funded.

Insurance-managed care networks have non-discrimination clauses that forbid discrimination based on many attributes including payment source, but also including race, gender, religion, national origin and other. This bill would obviate such anti-discrimination clauses. It would allow health care providers to individually decline to treat your employees or their dependents as in-network insureds and move them into out-of-network reimbursement, which would then allow them to balance bill the people they think can pay more individually.

The bill is intended to do harm to insurance-managed care networks. That same harm will affect public employee insurance you pay for with your tax dollars. It will also damage the same networks that handle Medicaid and Medicare – both of which you pay for with tax dollars.

What should you do? Call your state representative and tell him/her that HB 1022 will damage your insurer’s managed care network and therefore increase your and your employees' health care costs. This bill is intended to get more money for health care providers and nothing else. Demand that your legislator vote against HB 1022.

The House switchboard is 317-232-9600 or 800-382-9842.

Who is my legislator?  Click HERE to find out.