Legislation would increase costs and undermine quality for patients
Legislators at the North Carolina General Assembly have put forward a costly and dangerous government mandate that would force families and businesses, through their insurance premiums, to cover (i.e. pay for) any healthcare service provided virtually if it’s covered in-person.
This proposal could increase costs and undermine the quality of care that patients receive.
HB149: Costs Go Up
As telehealth is defined in the legislation, patients could be on the hook for emails, text messages and chats with their doctor – or between two doctors when the patient isn’t even involved!
Imagine getting a bill in the mail because after uploading your medical history in a patient portal, one doctor texted another about it.
What’s worse, imagine that other doctor is not in your insurance network. Now you’re on the hook for a potentially large surprise bill.
HB149: Quality Goes Down
The legislation also ignores the fact that there are in-person healthcare services where the quality and effectiveness cannot be matched through telehealth.
For example, the quality of in-person physical therapy and dermatology cannot be equaled over video, much less phone or text messaging.
Moreover, there are other healthcare services that simply cannot be safely performed virtually, whether a doctor is on the phone with you or not. Infusions, injections, and drawing blood are just a few examples.
Telehealth, when done right, has the potential to vastly improve healthcare by expanding access and lowering costs.
But HB149 is not telehealth done right.
It may give a few multibillion-dollar mega-hospital systems a windfall by letting them bill you for things like emails, texts or remote monitoring.
And it may open the door for more private-equity backed provider groups to exploit telehealth in order to maximize their profit-generating surprise billing scheme.
But for consumers, it will only raise costs and lower quality.
And that jeopardizes the long-term goals of telehealth.
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