The state’s Assembly Commerce and Labor Committee will revisit the bill May 10. ACA encourages members and their health care clients to weigh in on the proposal.
5/7/2021 11:00
The Nevada Assembly Committee on Commerce and Labor continues to consider an amended version of S.B. 284, which revises provisions of state law related to the collection of medical debt and has the option for stakeholders to submit their opinion on the proposal.
ACA International is seeking member input on the bill and is looking to identify members that have health care clients working in the medical debt collection space in Nevada.
Contact Andrew Madden, ACA’s vice president of state unit and government affairs, at [email protected] for more information and to share your input or visit the committee’s hearing website and select “Submit an Opinion” listed under the Monday, May 10, hearing date.
ACA members testified in opposition to the bill before the committee April 23.
The bill, which passed in the Nevada Senate 19-2 April 12, requires a collection agency to notify a consumer before taking any action to collect a medical debt and prohibits certain practices relating to the collection of medical debt, ACA previously reported.
During his testimony, ACA President G. Scott Purcell, president of Professional Credit in Springfield, Oregon, noted that best practices to prevent extraordinary collection actions are already in place between ACA and the Healthcare Financial Management Association.
“We’ve got really good frameworks in play, and I feel like this [bill] is really well intended but is going to hurt providers, which will reduce access and increase costs for the materially poor and the middle class,” Purcell said. “I don’t think [that] is what everybody is trying to accomplish.”
The two-part amendment to the bill presented April 23 is intended to clarify potentially confusing language identified by stakeholders and, at the request of stakeholders, “that medical debt may be pursued for collection in justice court in a small claims action if it falls within the jurisdictional limit.”
It strikes provisions such as requiring a collection agency to notify the consumer whether a third party has been billed for medical goods or services, and whether the “medical facility, provider of health care or provider of emergency medical services offers a program of financial assistance for medical debtors.”
The amendment adds the following text: “Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to prohibit the commencement of a small claims action in justice court to collect the medical debt.”
The bill, sponsored by State Sen. Marilyn Dondero Loop, D-Las Vegas, may be reconsidered in the Senate now that an amendment was introduced in the Assembly.