Kentucky Battles For Health Insurance Coverage
Legislators in Kentucky have been caught in the battle between kidney dialysis companies and health insurance agencies. The battle is over reimbursing patients such as 84 year-old Noble Orr for life-saving blood filtering treatments he has to receive three times a week.
Orr recently had to change insurance companies from United Healthcare because the dialysis center near his home in Murray, Kentucky was no longer in the network of United’s providers. This critical clash creates a rift between two warring sets of billion-dollar companies and some of the most medically vulnerable patients whose lives depend on their care.
Dialysis care providers ask that legislators ensure reimbursements stay high as they have been in the past, which sets a trend throughout the health care industry when other service providers typically demand the same protection, increasing costs for everyone. Of Kentucky and Indiana’s 10,000 dialysis patients, 10 percent depend on private coverage while the rest primarily fall under Medicare coverage. Less than 500 of those with private coverage go to an out of network dialysis center, but insurers say that number is higher.
Matt Bassett, a vice president of DaVita (America’s second-largest dialysis company) says patients pay higher premiums for the choice to go out of network, but that this choice is also being systematically removed by insurance companies, like Orr’s situation with United.
Last year Anthem hacked its rate to out of network dialysis centers, opening the door for higher bills to patients – imposing a change to a place in network but much farther away from home.
Dialysis patients in Kentucky spoke out at this week’s hearings citing America’s freedom of choice regarding what care providers they go to. Despite their few numbers, patients receiving dialysis care incur high costs, averaging $266 per visit and 156 treatments annually.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
News
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment