Law could open healthcare market

Legislation introduced Wednesday could impose state regulation on the fight between the area’s largest health insurer and its biggest employer, Highmark and UPMC, respectively.

Pennsylvania Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, and Jim Christiana, R-Beaver, have jointly introduced a legislation package of two bills that aim to make the Pennsylvania health care market more competitive. Under the bills, large health care networks would not be able to tell member physicians or facilities to deny access to patients based on insurance.

According to a statement the legislators released, the bills would require any hospital and individual physician practices owned by a hospital system to contract with “any willing insurer.”

“With today’s rapidly changing health care marketplace, we must find ways to prevent hospitals and doctors from denying patients access to quality health care based on the insurance card in their wallets,” Christiana said in a statement.

Frankel said in the same statement that the bills would prevent a single, large hospital system from dominating the health care market.

Highmark, which insures 3.2 million customers in western Pennsylvania under its different plans, has accused UPMC of denying members of its Community Blue program access to treatment.

Aaron Billger, a spokesman for Highmark, said that the company welcomes the bills.

“There is a mounting concern in Pennsylvania about dominant hospitals that are raising healthcare costs,” he said.

Billger acknowledged that Highmark — which also owns Allegheny Health Network — is also one of the dominant providers in the area, but said that the company wants to promote competition.

But UPMC spokesman Paul Wood disagreed, saying the bills would not affect all large hospital systems.

“Instead, it imposes that mandate only on those hospitals that affiliate with an insurance plan,” he said in a statement.