Less than two months before health exchanges open to the public, hospitals are asking to change a part of the Affordable Care Act that leaves them at financial risk for patients who fall behind on their insurance premiums.
The hospitals said in an Aug. 15 letter that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should reconsider the way health-insurance exchanges divide the financial responsibility for delinquent customers. The letter was signed by the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, and the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“We are very concerned about our risk for giving uncompensated care,” Joanne Alig, senior vice president for policy and research at the Wisconsin Hospital Association, said in a telephone interview.
The conflict arose when regulations written to implement the core parts of the Affordable Care Act next year created a 90-day grace period before insurers can drop patients who fall behind on premiums. Insurers balked and the Obama administration changed the rules so that the financial burden for the first 30 days fell on insurers, while hospitals would carry the default risk for care provided in the remaining 60 days.
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“Hospitals are right to be worried,” said Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst in Stamford, Connecticut, for CRT Capital Group LLC. The goal of the health law “was for the hospitals to no longer be the insurer of last resort. There must be some other solution than putting this on the back of the hospitals.”
Date: Aug 17, 2013