HELP US ACHIEVE A STANDARD MANAGED CARE CONTRACT

FOR COLORADO!

Please make these phone calls – we need your immediate action!

BACKGROUND: Colorado physicians have little if any power when negotiating with managed care organizations. Most physicians have at least a dozen different managed care contracts that average 15 pages of small print with one or two addenda each.

THE SITUATION: SB 198, authored by Sen. Steve Johnson, (R-Fort Collins), and House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, (D-Denver), and 57 bipartisan co-sponsors will require disclosure of contract terms and prohibit certain unfair contracting provisions currently in practice. Acting through an advisory committee, Colorado will be required to develop a standard managed care contract for physicians and other health care professionals. Physicians will have a choice of utilizing the standardized contract or a contract offered by individual health plans.

HEALTH PLAN RESPONSE:  Because this legislation has not been enacted in any state legislature in the country, most but not all health plans are going all out to kill SB 198.   CMS has received reports that the industry is in the process of interviewing even more “hired gun” lobbyists hoping to quietly kill the legislation under the radar.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Immediately fight back by contacting your Boulder County legislators: (1) express appreciation for co-sponsorship of SB 198, or (2) respectfully request support for the bill.  Explain in your own words the problems with contracting in today’s environment with multi-billion dollar health plans and how fuller disclosure through a standardized contract would help. 

We do NOT have Senator Shawn Mitchell on the bill, he is not on record either way but did NOT want to co-sponsor SB 198.  PLEASE CALL Sen. Mitchell and urge him to support this bill: (303) 866-4876.

These Boulder County legislators ARE supporting this bill, please THANK THEM FOR THEIR SUPPORT OF SB 198:

Sen. Brandon Shaffer: (303) 866-5291

                   Sen. Joan Fitz-Gerald: (303) 866-3342

                   Rep. Paul Weissmann: (303) 866-2920

                   Rep. Alice Madden: (303) 866-2348

Rep. Jack Pommer: (303) 866-2780