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Doctor fee database set to launch

November 4, 2009
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By year’s end, Americans will have access via a Web site to a new database that will allow them to track what Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. and other health insurers pay doctors who are not in their pre-negotiated networks, according to Bloomberg News.

The not-for-profit database is being funded with $100 million in legal settlements from 12 health insurers as part of a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

He said insurers were using the Ingenix database, owned by Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare, which used faulty data in order to reduce payments to doctors, which left patients with larger bills.

The 12 insurers have agreed to use the database, hosted at Syracuse University, to set the rates they’ll pay when their customers receive services from physicians that are “out of network,” which means the doctor has not agreed in advance to give the insurer a discount.

WellPoint settled with Cuomo by agreeing to pay $10 million. UnitedHealthcare paid the most: $50 million.

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  1. These higher rates Co. e about only because physicians are now hospital employees. otherwise physicians couldn't charge these rates and share the windfall with the hospital. Community/rural hospitals probably not buying physicians practices and thus weren't getting the windfall anyway.

  2. The incentive for poor people to get themselves off public assistance and "no longer be poor" is even with help...they're STILL POOR! Being poor, even with some assistance, isn't all that pleasant. (I speak from experience) It's a stubborn myth that poor people, who are on public assistance, are sitting in the lap of luxury. You should try living on just those "freebies" that you mentioned and see how meager they actually are. By the way, I didn't mean you had to buy/own a puppy...just pet one. :)

  3. As near as I can tell the minority has ZERO constitutional obligation to offer a quorum to the majority. A requirement for quorum was inserted into the constitution so that tyrannical majorities could not simply shove through odious and objectionable legislation (which is exactly what they did.) By allowing a tyrannical majority to charge fines against the minority for exercising their constitutional prerogative to deny quorum the court as made a mockery of constitutional governance in the state of Indiana.

  4. The voters elected the Reps to make a vote not walk out on the vote. They had to the right to exercise their opinion and vote "no" to the bill. Let me ask you this if you walked out of your job for 5 straight weeks would you get paid? Would you even have a job to go back to? If any elected official walks out on the people they should be arrested for stealing tax dollars from the public. They were elected to do a job and not leave when the job gets stuff.

  5. I have been to several of their locations in Pennsylvania and always go in for 1 item and leave with a basket full of things. I'm very happy they decided on Indiana, now if only they would put the other store in eastside.

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