As of July 1st, health insurers must disclose all the prices they pay to medical providers so that you can see how crappy a job your $20 million/year health insurance CEO is doing negotiating on your behalf. There’s $100/day fine per customer affected for any violations – this could add up to millions of dollars per day for scofflaws.
The new rules are far broader than those that went into effect last year requiring hospitals to post their negotiated rates for the public to see. Now insurers must post the amounts paid for “every physician in network, every hospital, every surgery center, every nursing facility,” said Jeffrey Leibach, a partner at the consulting firm Guidehouse.
Federal officials learned from the hospital experience and gave insurers more direction on what was expected, said Leibach. Insurers or self-insured employers could be fined as much as $100 a day for each violation and each affected enrollee if they fail to provide the data.
I almost wish I still had for crap, private health insurance so that I could file suit.
Michigan car insurance used to have a mandatory, infinite, medical benefit, that paid care providers whatever they asked, and they could ask a lot, rather than any sort of negotiated rate. That was a major part of Michigan having the most expensive car insurance rates in the country, by a wide margin.
The Gov got a reform proposal through the legislature, before the insurance company lobbyists could kill it. My car insurance is now about half what it used to be.
But the insurance industry isn’t giving up. Every year, around the first of July, the anniversary of when the reform went into effect, the insurance companies start a propaganda campaign. All the local TV stations run “news reports” about how catastrophically injured people are loosing their gold plated benefits, like in home nursing care, because the insurance only pays the workman’s comp rates now, so they have to check in to a nursing home.
I almost wish I still had for crap, private health insurance so that I could file suit.
The best way is to be a class-action atty who files a class-action law suit against the insurance companies (like you see on TV for asbestos exposure, tampon use, J&J baby powder, and a variety of other categories).
That way, you collect big fees and a portion of the total award won but the people who were harmed get MAYBE a few bucks (literally).
That way, you collect big fees and a portion of the total award won but the people who were harmed get MAYBE a few bucks (literally).
Seems to me, contingency class action suits are the only way people of modest means can see justice done. They can’t afford to pay a lawyer, up front, for the full cost of the case. A lawyer cheap enough to be “affordable” for an individual would be eaten alive by the corporate legal department. Bob Kearns had to prosecute his patent infringement case against Ford Motor himself, because no lawyer would take his case and go up against Ford’s legal department.
Saying that class action suits should not be pursued because plaintiffs often do not net a huge payout after covering legal costs, is a diversionary way of saying “JCs” should not be prosecuted, regardless of their behavior.
I miss Mark Haines. Being a lawyer, he would stomp all over the whiners that came on bubblevision to demand “tort reform”, to ban “junk lawsuits”. Mark knew what the law was and countered with facts, words to the effect “most tort cases are between companies: patent infringement, copyright infringement, theft of trade secrets, but no-one is proposing corporations be prevented from protecting their rights.” and “there is no recovery unless proximate cause is proven”, meaning, the “JCs” can only lose if they really did do something scummy, for which they should be punished.
As of July 1st, health insurers must disclose all the prices they pay to medical providers…
Do they also require Medicare/Medicaid to list their prices so the public can better understand why so many physicians don’t participate and/or severely limit those patient numbers?