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2008 Legislative Session Begins
Monday, March 31st was the beginning of the 2008 Regular Legislative Session consisting of a total of 1,777 pre-filed bills, many of which feature medical and health care issues. The LAFP's Committee on Legislative and Membership Issues, along with Lobbyist, Joe Mapes and George Sutton, met on Friday, April 4th to discuss 83 of the pre-filed bills.
Among the bills discussed was HB 826 by Representative Lorusso and the accompanying SB 320 by Senator Cassidy. Both introduced by the Louisiana State Medical Society to provide for a constitutional amendment to be submitted to the citizens of Louisiana for a popular vote allowing the establishment of medical malpractice caps by the legislature. After discussing the two bills mentioned above, the Legislative Committee suggested that we monitor HB 826 and lightly support SB 320.
SB 668 by Senator LaFleur, another medical malpractice bill was also discussed during the meeting. Introduced by LAMMICO and based on the current Texas medical malpractice law, SB 668 envisions a much different Louisiana Medical Malpractice law for the future by raising the primary layer for all qualified health care providers from the present $100,000 to $250,000 with multiple stacking “caps” on certain classes of health care providers and unlimited damage awards of all future medical expenses, related benefits and economic loss. On March 18th, the LAFP sent a survey to all members to see what we should support – one of the four models proposed, an altogether different model or do we try to hold the status quo. The Committee on Legislative and Membership Issues recommends that at the present time, we should not support any of the medical malpractice proposals due to extreme controversy between various healthcare organizations, a lack of responses from our member survey (only received six) and our lobbyists informing us that there will probably be a special fall session specifically targeting healthcare issues. Therefore, we will continue to monitor SB 668 for the time being.
One other important bill reviewed by the Legislative Committee was SB 464 by Senator Murray, which provides relative to healthcare arrangements provided to a health care consumer. Who does SB 464 Impact? This bill has an impact on “Base health care facility” and the “Facility – based physician”.
SB 464 denies physicians the right to determine whether they want to participate in a managed care network, which would remove negotiating power from physicians. Managed care companies would no longer have to negotiate in good faith with the physicians and would be authorized to, unilaterally, set physician fees. Hospitals will have to increase subsides or begin to subsidize the facility-based physician groups that currently provide care. Overcrowding problems in the ED could easily worsen, as the ED becomes the in-network option for everyone. Hospitals will not have adequate backup coverage for the emergency department; therefore, fewer doctors will elect to participate in call list and the lack of back up coverage will threaten access to certain services. As a direct result of this proposed legislation, insurance companies would increase their profits, while prohibiting physicians the freedom to contract for fair reimbursement rates for services provided to the citizens of Louisiana. SB 464 eliminates the freedom and rights of facility based and all medical staff physicians to contract for fair payment of their services; therefore, the LAFP suggest we strongly oppose this bill.
Click on the following link to view a tracking report of all the bills being watched by the LAFP as of 4/27/08 with suggestions made by the committee on the position that the LAFP will carry: 2008 LAFP Bill Status Report
Please forward any comments to us at academy@lafp.org. Visit our website at www.lafp.org for more information on suggested LAFP positions, regarding bills filed for the 2008 Regular Legislative Session as well as continued updates and alerts.
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