In November a Washington state judge sided with physicians in halting the state’s plan to limit Medicaid patients to three emergency room visits per year. Rather than move forward with the judge’s ruling for a formal rulemaking process, HCA responded to its loss in court by announcing in December it will stop paying for all emergency department visits for Medicaid patients when HCA deems those visits “not medically necessary in the ER setting.” What was previously an arbitrary cap on ER visits has now become an outright refusal to cover care HCA believes is unnecessary. The problem is that patients do not know what care is an emergency or not.
Please contact your legislators today and urge them to consider our alternative plan, drafted by the WSMA, WSHA, and WA-ACEP, that saves the state money and does not impose an arbitrary cap or completely prohibit emergency room visits. ...
