A Republican state lawmaker from Morton is sponsoring a bill making it illegal for insurance companies to place a time limit on anesthesia payment coverage.
Rep. Bill Hauter, who represents a heavily rural area between Bloomington-Normal, Peoria, Decatur and Springfield, said the bill was a response to Blue Cross attempting to place a time limit on anesthesia in New York, Missouri and Connecticut. That decision was upended by public outcry, but in Missouri, the time limit will go into effect in February.
Hauter is a licensed physician and the only physician in the Illinois General Assembly. He said the decision to place a time limit for anesthesia was dangerous.
“Things can be complicated," Hauter said. "There can be things that come up in the surgery. There could be reasons why it's longer than usual, or even shorter than usual, but to stop coverage at an arbitrary time frame is not only ludicrous, but it's actually dangerous.”
Hauter said as a health care worker, he has seen insurance companies focus too much on profit over the well-being of their patients.
“I see these tactics the insurance companies continuously do to decrease the coverage or increase their profits,” Hauter said. “And so, this was another and just an outrageous way that they would propose to stop covering you, and patients have no control over this.”
The Illinois Department of Insurance would be able to punish and penalize insurance companies if they violate the proposed law. Hauter said this can come with sanctions or audits of the violating company.
The bill was created in collaboration with Rep. Diane Blair-Sherlock, D-Villa Park, who called up Hauter after the Blue Cross announcement. Hauter said he anticipates the bill will have further bipartisan support.
“Health care is really a bipartisan issue,” Hauter said. “When you're talking about patient safety issues and patient payment and Medicaid and the things that have to do with health care, a lot of those, the cost of prescription drugs, mental health care, all these things are bipartisan issues.”
Hauter also said that the bill should cover all types of anesthesia such as regional anesthesia, spinal anesthesia and epidural anesthesia.
Mental health
Hauter said he also wants to use the session to pass new bills addressing mental health and further reforming health insurance.
Hauter said there is a staffing crisis in the mental health field after the COVID pandemic. Hauter said the state should ease the process of becoming a licensed healthcare worker and raise their wages.
“So, to capture those people, we have to make Illinois somewhere they want to go, or they want to stay, somewhere they want to practice, and somewhere they can easily be licensed,” Hauter said. “And so, there's so many areas where we can improve on that and then improve our mental health care staffing, or the personnel that are doing the counseling and the treating.”
Hauter also said the state should address and regulate the drug Kratom, an herbal substance that can cause stimulant-like and opioid-like effects.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cited a report that said the drug led to 11 deaths from 2011-2017. Most deaths with Kratom are combined with other drugs, but rarely does exposure to Kratom alone lead to death.