Folks- HB350 comes back to the House tomorrow afternoon!! Email your thoughts to your Representative tonight!NEWS: House Vote on Compromise Hospital Budget Control Bill Expected Tomorrow
MAY 20, 2024 -- A contentious bill seeking to give state officials budgetary control of Delaware's non-profit hospitals has been significantly modified in an agreement announced last week and which is expected to be voted on in the House tomorrow.
House Substitute 2 for House Bill 350 passed the House on April 25th with the minimum 21 votes needed for approval. The compromise occurred while it was awaiting consideration in the Senate.
In its original form, the bill would have required hospital officials to submit their annual budgets to a state-appointed board while adhering to a spending growth benchmark.
Hospital officials with budgets exceeding the threshold would have had to develop a “performance review plan” to curtail spending growth. If these steps failed, the board could have taken additional actions, ultimately including fines of up to $500,000 or seizure of funds.
The original bill would have also prohibited hospitals from charging more than 250% of the fees allowed under Medicare for the first two years, a provision that hospital officials warned could have eliminated $360 million in revenue next year.
Negotiations between the bill's sponsors--House Speaker Valerie Longhurst (D-Bear, St. Georges) and Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend (D-Newark, Bear)--the Carney administration, and the Delaware Healthcare Association, led a compromise including the following changes:
-- Significantly modifying the medical services price caps.
-- Providing more flexibility in setting the healthcare spending growth benchmark.
-- Requiring the state to clarify the performance improvement plan process.
-- Eliminating the board’s ability to seize hospital assets.
Delaware Healthcare Association President & CEO Brian Frazee, whose group represented the hospitals, wrote in a letter to lawmakers on Monday that the DHA would not oppose the revised legislation.
The changes were added via an amendment before the bill was passed by the Senate, 14 to 7, on Thursday.
The amended bill will need to be reconsidered in the House, with a vote expected tomorrow. State Rep. Danny Short (R-Seaford), an outspoken critic of the measure and a healthcare coverage expert, said he was glad to see the concessions but will still likely oppose the bill.
"Even in its less objectionable form, I still find the legislation a troubling overreach of governmental authority," he said. "The supposition of the bill's sponsors is that the hospitals are making unreasonable profits and are a major reason for healthcare cost hikes. Collectively, our state's non-profit hospitals actually lost money last year. In fact, one of the State of Delaware's largest factors in rising healthcare expenses has been its inability to prudently manage its cost structure for medical services and prescription drugs.
"Before establishing a new bureaucracy to further expand its authority into the private sector, the state should first competently manage its own healthcare plans and address its failure to rein in state spending growth," Rep Short said.
... See MoreSee Less
1 day ago