Senate passes health care ‘transparency’ bill as end of 2024 Session draws near

Concept of national healthcare system - Florida

The Senate passed a health care transparency bill and priority of House Speaker Paul Renner unanimously and has sent it to the House for final passage.

It was one of the last bills Senators passed before the chamber adjourned for the evening. The Senate will reconvene at 10 a.m. for what promises to be a relatively light final day. Senate President Kathleen Passidomo earlier predicted the Senate would adjourn Sine Die and end the Session by noon.

HB 7089 increases patient access to health care cost and coverage information from hospitals and insurers for nonemergency services and procedures. It requires hospitals to provide a good faith estimate of services to patients — and their insurance companies — for scheduled services and procedures.

It also requires the insurance company to provide their customers an advanced explanation of benefits no later than one business day after receiving the patient estimate from the facility, or no later than 3 business days if the service won’t occur for two weeks.

At a minimum, the advanced explanation of benefits must include detailed coverage and cost-sharing information as required by new federal law. The bill also requires hospitals to post on their website a consumer-friendly list of standard charges for at least 300 shoppable health care services, or an internet-based price estimator tool meeting federal standards or the standard charge for each service it provides.

In addition to the transparency requirements, the bill beefs up consumer protections for health care debt by preventing hospitals from taking “extraordinary collection action” against patients for the payment of a bill, precluding hospitals from selling the information to a third party, reporting the debt to a consumer credit agency or taking certain legal action against them.

HB 7089 — and the Senate counterpart filed by Sen. Jay Collins — are part of the Live Healthy package touted by Passidomo.

“We know that over 100 million Americans, or about 40% of U.S. adults have some form of health care debt. When Floridians are facing a challenging health care diagnosis, the last thing we want for any family is to struggle even more because of exorbitant medical debt, or unclear, unexpected medical bills,” Collins said.

“This legislation will go a long way to increase transparency so patients have a better understanding of costs and protection from onerous debt collection practices.”

There are several bills under the Live Healthy moniker in addition to HB 7089. Others also include SB 7016 and SB 7018, as well as SB 1758. Indeed, health care was a priority for Passidomo, a Republican from Naples.

But she didn’t include in the Live Healthy a plan to expand Medicaid coverage to uninsured childless adults. She reiterated her opposition to expanding Medicaid on the opening day of the 2024 Session and again this week in media availability.

The Senate also sent to the House earlier in the day SB 1112, another priority health care bill for Passidomo.