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Seman organizing public meeting on GHLI issues
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Posted on Apr 17 2002
House Rep. Benjamin Seman has called for a meeting among private healthcare providers, the Government Health and Life Insurance, and concerned government agencies to prevent further rejection of GHLI recipients due to billing woes.
The total amount of GHLI’s unpaid bills to healthcare providers was not immediately available but Seman said it may not reach $1 million. As for the PMC, unpaid bills amounted to around $200,000.
The meeting is tentatively scheduled for April 30. Expected to attend the meeting are representatives from the NMI Retirement Fund, the Group Health and Life Insurance, HPMR, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as officials from the Department of Finance.
“So these are the things that we need to address because it has been mentioned already that PMC is closing down it’s door to government insurance recipients come May 10, so we hope to address this,” said Seman.
He said the meeting would provide an open discussion of the issue, where each party concerned would air its position in the presence of the other parties involved.
What he identified as a problem was that, since healthcare billings assessed on GHLI recipients are now being reviewed by a third-party administrator, the payment of these bills have been delayed, and healthcare providers are not used to this.
“HPMR was hired by GHLI to act as its third-party administrator. Now, HPMR needs to scrutinize all bills received by GHLI,” he explained. “In the past, Hawaii and our local providers are used to receiving payment upon billing.”
“Now we have a third-party administrator who looks into these claims and are finding discrepancies in the bill, meaning double charges, wrong CPT code, discrepancies on the billing. What they [providers] claim, they [HPMR staff] are returning them to the providers to correct them,” he added.
