Health Care Billing Fight is Looming

[Celebration]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080517-9999-1b17balance.html

Doctors and hospital officials will square off with health insurers Monday in San Diego over a state plan to ban medical providers from billing emergency room patients for charges not covered by insurance companies.
The proposal, by the Department of Managed Health Care, is the agency's third attempt in two years to outlaw so-called balance billing, which turns patients into pawns in payment disputes. The earlier proposals were scrubbed after regulators failed to build consensus among various health care parties.

What remains is a stripped-down version that lacks provisions for an independent dispute-resolution process and a method for calculating fair charges for hospital and doctor services.
The San Diego hearing comes about two weeks after several medical centers owned by Prime Healthcare, including Paradise Valley Hospital in National City, sent thousands of collection letters to Kaiser Permanente members. They demanded payment for outstanding emergency room bills.

Prime's hospitals had sued Kaiser, the state's largest health plan, in February. They contended that Kaiser refused to pay for more than $25 million worth of services after concluding that the conditions of some patients didn't constitute true emergencies.