Peter Schorsch
Today in the Orlando Sentinel, an emergency room physician by the name of Jay L. Falk, on behalf of the Florida College of Emergency Physicians (FCEP), wrote a column titled, “Emergency Physicians Seek Solutions To Fair Treatment,” in support of a balance billing fix.
Dr. Falk, like everyone else, wants to hold patients harmless.
He suggests that the insurance companies pay out-of-network doctors a fee based on an independent database, mainly FAIR Health. FAIR Health, for those who have not been involved in this issue, is a national independent database used by states, providers and many insurance companies that indexes different charges for different services.
Here is how Dr. Falk says it: “Benchmarking tools, such as the FAIR Health database, have been created to resist manipulation by the insurance industry and to help ensure health-care-cost transparency. FAIR Health, a national, independent, nonprofit corporation, uses its database of billions of billed medical and dental services to help consumers plan or estimate health-care costs.”
In short, FAIR Health rocks!
So what’s the problem?
The FCEP is opposing the use of the FAIR Health database solution in the balance billing bills moving through the Legislature.
Oops.
