The NMI Retirement Fund\u2019s debt with health providers may increase three-fold if it is not settled before June 30, when the Fund\u2019s contract with third party administrator Hawaii Pacific Medical Referral expires.<\/p>\n
Fund administrator Karl T. Reyes said yesterday that, excluding the $7 million debt with the Commonwealth Health Center, the Group Health Insurance program owes HPMR $2.7 million for billings charged by health providers\u2014hospitals and health centers\u2014in Guam, Hawaii, and the U.S mainland.<\/p>\n
The $2.7 million is the discounted amount obtained through HPMR.<\/p>\n
If this is not paid before the HPMR contract\u2019s expiration on June 30, authorities fear that the Fund may be charged the original amount.<\/p>\n
Reyes said HPMR itself expressed such apprehension. He said that, without HPMR\u2019s discounts, the $2.7 million might go up to $7 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the concern of HPMR so they want us to know it,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
He said the Fund simply lacks the needed funds to settle the debt right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere do we get the money to pay it?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
He said the Fund is researching on the legalities of the matter, adding that the Fund wants to pay the HPMR-discounted amount, not the original charges. <\/p>\n
The Fund earlier said it is current in its monthly payments with HPMR but not with health providers.<\/p>\n
He said the Fund is able to pay $500,000 every month to HPMR, including $93,000 in administrative service fee and some $230,000 for Rx America and PHI Pharmacy for medicines.<\/p>\n
Reyes said the total debt with health providers through HPMR totaled $9 million, including $7 million with CHC, as of March this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NMI Retirement Fund\u2019s debt with health providers may increase three-fold if it is not settled before June 30, when the Fund\u2019s contract with third party administrator Hawaii Pacific Medical Referral expires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}