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Wed Aug 16 22:36:37 BST 2006

Bill, 

Attached is the letter that I wrote to the committee that eventually brought the repeal of the "denial law" to the floor of the legislature.  This repeal was passed with no effort at all.  A key here is that in 2001 the National Association of Insurance Commissioners voted to repeal their original position as stated in their "Model Law" dating back to 1947.  

While the modern day insurance carriers are understandably slow in wanting this repeal, I have no doubt that public pressure - from hospitals, physicians and the lobbyists that represent the state hospital associations - will eventually bring this law down across the board.  Till then, well, as you said, "we should always do the right thing for the patient", as I have no doubt that you always have and always will do.

Take care,
Ron

>>> "William Bromberg" <brombwi1 at memorialhealth.com> 8/16/2006 4:14 PM >>>
Rick,

I appreciate the info and will check Larry's  database to see who to pester. However, if they close the trauma center b/c the hospital loses to much money (which they've threatened to do here more than once) then the aggregate loss to the population is worse than not screening (IMO * but I tend to have an overinflated sense of my own worth, just ask my wife). That being said, we should always do the right thing for the patient but we should not be suckers and forget to fight to make other people do the right thing too. In short if the right thing for us to do  is BA testing (which I believe) than we should screen. We should also still be paid for the patient's care. The insurance companies would LOVE a policy that requires us to select out ~60% of patients (est. of alcohol-related MVCs) that they could then deny payment on. As part of this initiative we should demand repeal of those laws.

Bill
>>> docrickfry at aol.com 08/16/06 01:03PM >>>
Bill--
Larry Gentilello has a handle on every state's status with regard to these laws, and who the contact person is in your state legislature or Insurance Office to work with regarding changing this legislations.  Contact him to help.   Meanwhile, are we really saying that payment issues will cause us to deny patients what is best for them????
ERF

-----Original Message-----
From: brombwi1 at memorialhealth.com 
To: trauma-list at trauma.org 
Sent: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 9:54 AM
Subject: Re: Alcohol Screening

What are we to do with the insurance policies that deny payment for 
alcohol-related MVCs? These laws need to changed.

Bill B

William J. Bromberg
Savannah Surgical Group
912 350-7412

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William J. Bromberg
Savannah Surgical Group
912 350-7412

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