Bill > S496

This bill aims to establish new rules for how health insurance carriers (companies that provide health insurance) must handle uncollected patient payments, specifically co-payments (a fixed amount a patient pays for a service), co-insurance (a percentage of the cost a patient pays after a co-payment), and deductibles (an amount a patient must pay before insurance coverage kicks in). Under this bill, if a healthcare provider has made reasonable efforts to collect these patient payments for a unique service that amounts to at least $250 and remains unpaid for over 120 days, the insurance carrier must reimburse the provider for at least 65% of that unpaid amount. Healthcare providers will need to submit an annual request for these reimbursements, detailing their collection efforts and the specific patient payment details. The bill also mandates that a government division will create regulations within 90 days to guide these collection efforts, and if they fail to do so, the bill's provisions will automatically take effect, using existing Medicare guidelines for reasonable collection efforts. Finally, insurance carriers will be required to report annually to the division on the amounts of uncollected patient payments they reimburse or deny, with this information to be made public.