Phelan files bill to protect health consumers
Published 9:32 am Saturday, February 23, 2019
By Ken Stickney
State Rep. Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, has filed a bill to protect Texans from price gouging at free-standing emergency rooms.
House Bill 1941’s aim is to prevent what Phelan says are “unconscionable” prices for care at facilities that charge far in excess — more than 200 percent — for emergency care than consumers might pay elsewhere, such as at hospitals or other health-care facilities.
“Some are good actors and some are bad actors,” Phelan said of the free-standing ERs, suggesting that many within the industry agree with his legislation.
So do constituents, he said, who’ve complained to his office.
“People go in for strep throat and get charged emergency room rates,” Phelan said.
“You go to one place and they charge you $400 for a cut finger, so why is it $4,000 at the next place?”
Part of the problem is that some providers suggest that they are within health insurance plans when, in fact, they are not.
“We hear (consumers) are told ‘We take your insurance, we take your insurance’ and you find that they don’t,” he said, leaving consumers holding hefty bills, sometimes for thousands of dollars for routine services.
Phelan said 2017 legislation that was passed to combat the problem encountered some difficulty. The attorney general has cases on file, he said, but has not been able to act on them. This legislation, Phelan said, will help the AG’s consumer protection division to act.
He said hospitals that charge for services within the law are put at an unfair disadvantage by free-standing ERs that promise faster services under insurance plans, than perform what he called a “bait-and-switch” maneuver.
Phelan’s office said that freestanding ERs are responsible for 80 percent of out-of-network ER services in Texas.
“They also lead to more than $3 billion a year in unnecessary emergency room health care costs by charging about 20 times more for the same service as a patient would pay in a doctor’s office or urgent care center” Phelan’s staff said in an issued statement.
He said the problem abounds across Texas, where more than half the freestanding ERs in the U.S. are located.
He said legislation also allows for additional penalties for duping elderly patients.
Phelan said the issue has stirred support across parties for such legislation. In the Senate, Sens. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, and Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, have filed Senate Bill 866 as companion legislation to Phelan’s bill.
