OKPOLICY.ORG
There are some early bill filings by Senators for the upcoming session. House members usually do not file their bills until the final day for filing. A couple of bills by Senate leaders caught my attention because of their potential impact. Sen. Greg McCortney, R-Ada, Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, apparently is looking for a way to gather data to control high health care costs in the state.
Sen. McCortney pre-filed SB 5 that would require each hospital in the state to compile a list of 25 common outpatient procedures and submit annually to the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) a list of its average charges for those procedures. The bill also requires the OSDH to establish a list of the 25 most commonly performed inpatient procedures in hospitals in the state and develop a list of each hospital’s average charges for those procedures. OSDH is required to publish the two lists on its website, and each hospital is required to provide a copy of the lists to any person upon request. While patients do not usually shop price when going to the hospital, price transparency may reveal some of the reasons for high hospital costs in Oklahoma.
According to a 2019 study in Health Affairs, hospital care accounts for 33 percent of the nation’s health care costs. Between 2007 and 2014, prices for inpatient and outpatient hospital care rose much faster than physician prices. U.S. prices for surgical procedures in hospitals greatly exceed those of other countries. According to a study by the International Federation of Health Plans, some factors that may lead to the high U.S. health care costs are hospital consolidation, lack of a national healthcare system, and inadequate industry regulation. Prices tend to go up after hospital consolidations due to lack of competition. Perhaps if SB 5 passes, the data gathered will help compare and explain hospital costs in Oklahoma.
In another interesting bill, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, in his continuing efforts to manage costs and fees in the criminal justice system, has pre-filed SB 38 that deals with drug courts. Criminal defendants sentenced in drug court, unless they are deemed indigent, must pay providers for their treatment costs, drug testing and supervision costs. In addition, they are required to pay court costs and a drug court user fee not to exceed $20 per month, which is collected by the court clerk. The $20 user fee is currently remitted by the court clerk to the State Treasurer for deposit in the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services’ (ODMHSAS) Drug Abuse Education and Treatment Revolving Fund to pay for drug treatment.
SB 38 would create a new revolving fund to be administered by the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) into which the drug court costs and fees collected by the clerk would be deposited. The bill gives the AOC oversight of all drug court programs established in the Oklahoma Drug Court Act. This seems to be a significant broadening of authority for the AOC. Perhaps it is a way to coordinate drug court programs more efficiently throughout the state, but frankly it looks like a reallocation of funding from ODMHSAS to the courts. Hopefully, if the bill passes, it will create an instance where fiscal and treatment objectives can work together to produce better treatment for people whose substance abuse issues have brought them into the criminal justice system.
