Posted: | March 4, 2019 01:18 PM |
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From: | Representative Greg Rothman |
To: | All House members |
Subject: | Increase Patient Access to Experienced Doctors |
In the near future, I will be introducing legislation to increase patient access to experienced doctors. In Pennsylvania, patients are losing access to experienced physicians, due largely to the imbalance in market power in favor of health insurance companies. Insurers that own hospitals are credentialing our community’s physicians and, in many cases, are creating preferred networks after evaluating the physician’s employment status. Physician groups that are employed by insurer-owned hospitals are granted preferred status, while long-established private practice physicians are cast as lower tier providers solely because of their private practice status. In today’s insurance market, patients are paying higher co-pays, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums when they choose to see experienced private practice physicians instead of physicians that are employed by insurer-owned facilities. To ensure patient choice in selecting a physician to treat their disease or ailment, insurance companies should be required to credential physicians based only on their professional training, licensure and clinical expertise. Once credentialed, private-practice physicians should be listed as equal-tiered providers within a given insurers’ physician network. Please join me in co-sponsoring this important piece of legislation. |
Introduced as HB891