New York, NY –
New York's Attorney General announced the creation of a new non-profit company that he says will make it easier for patients and doctors nationwide to predict what they'll get from insurers. WNYC’s Fred Mogul has more:
REPORTER: If you use in-network doctors they and your insurer work out in advance what they get paid and what it costs you. But if you go out-of-network, insurers pay doctors a chunk of the so-called “usual and customary rate,” and you pay the rest. But that can be anyone's guess. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says a company called Ingenix has basically been colluding with every major insurance carrier in the country to set those rates. Today, he announced that a non-profit will now set the rates nationwide, as part of a settlement with several insurers – including Ingenix’s parent company, United Health Group. The newly created company is to be called “Fair Health.” It will operate as a consortium among several upstate universities, including Syracuse, Cornell and SUNY-Buffalo. For WNYC, I’m Fred Mogul.
Fred Mogul has been covering healthcare and medicine for WNYC since 2002. His beat takes him to hospitals, community clinics, doctors offices, health agencies, public schools and research labs across the metropolitan area. His work has appeared on NPR and in the New York Times, Time magazine and Philadelphia Inquirer, among others.
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