HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS FOR SB 198

 

April 11, 2006

 

To:       Colorado Senate

 

From:  American Physical Therapy Association, CO Chapter

            American Home Health Association, CO Chapter

            Colorado Chiropractic Association

Colorado Dental Association

Colorado Medical Society                  

            Colorado Nurses Association

            Colorado Optometric Association

            Colorado Society of Osteopathic Medicine

 

Re:      Support for SB 198, Johnson/Romanoff

 

The competitive impact statement in the final judgment of United States of America (plaintiff) v. UnitedHealth Group and PacifiCare Health Systems (defendant), filed March 3, 2006, explains what Colorado health care professionals have known for years. After a decade of health plan consolidations, Colorado is headed the way of other states where there are not only few choices for purchasers (employers), there are increasingly fewer meaningful choices for health care professionals to choose among health plans whose terms are fair, open, and subject to oversight. 

 

SB 198 provides disclosure of certain uniform provisions so that ColoradoÕs health care professionals may readily compare contract proposals. It protects our physicians, nurses, and other providers from abuse and retribution, and prevents them from being victimized by hidden network arrangements and unilateral amendments to contracts.

 

No small group practice in Boulder, Pueblo, Fort Collins, Denver, or elsewhere can marshal the legal, administrative, and economic resources to counterbalance the ever-increasing bargaining power of huge, out-of-state corporate entities who control 25 percent or more of a health care professionals business.

 

Now more than ever, ColoradoÕs health care professionals need market reforms like the rather modest tools in SB 198. There will be more transparency and accountability, which translates into the opportunity for the market to reward the good health plans by making them compete for health care professionals on the basis of the quality of their contract terms. Otherwise, thereÕll be more contracts of adhesion, take it or leave it business practices, and windfall health plan profits, while ColoradoÕs health care professionals and the patient we serve lose.

 

We respectfully request your support for SB 198 and that you follow Senator Johnson on all amendments.

 

To read  The Purchase of Physician Services: USA v. United/PacifiCare, click here:
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/unitedhealth.htm