State News

Mississippi passed a law exempting hospital acquisitions and mergers from state antitrust laws,
reports the Missouri Independent. Senate Bill 2323 classifies community hospitals as
government entities, which are immune from antitrust enforcement, in an attempt to prevent
rural hospitals from closing by allowing larger hospital systems more flexibility to merge with or
acquire rural hospitals and keep them open. Notably, national studies have found that increased
hospital consolidation can increase costs for patients.

In an effort to prevent medical debt and improve transparency, Texas hospitals are now
required to provide itemized bills to patients, reports Becker's Hospital Review. Beginning
September 1, 2023, hospitals must give patients an itemized bill, including plain language
descriptions of each charge and the payment amount, before sending them to collections.

Connecticut has announced the creation of a subsidy program designed to decrease annual
out-of-pocket health care costs for paraeducators across the state, reports the CT Mirror. The
subsidy is expected to pay up to 74 percent of the paraeducators' annual out-of-pocket health
care costs, and it is estimated that about 4,166 paraeducators will receive some amount of aid.
The stipend is a long-awaited relief for the 73 percent of paraeducators with high deductible
health plans who have been struggling to pay for their health care bills.

Cost reductions from Colorado’s health insurance programs have saved $245 million, which the
state will receive in federal pass-through funding, reports Colorado Politics. The funding comes
from the state’s reinsurance program and the Colorado Option, marking the first time a state has
been awarded federal pass-through funding for a combined program. The funding will be used
to lower premiums through the reinsurance program, provide direct subsidies for Connect for
Health Colorado consumers, and support the OmniSalud Program, which allows undocumented
immigrants to obtain health insurance from Colorado Option plans.

Texas has created a Wholesale Prescription Drug Importation Program, reports the Texas
Tribune. Under House Bill 25, the state can contract with Canadian drug wholesalers to import
prescription drugs to Texans at lower prices than U.S. wholesalers. Although the law goes into
effect September 1, the federal government has yet to approve and implement the programs
that will allow importation—it is unclear when or if the state will be able to import any
prescription drugs.

Telehealth appointments, costs, ER visits and hospitalizations among privately insured patients
increased significantly in Connecticut from 2020-2022, reports the CT Mirror. The study did not
determine whether these increases were necessary or unnecessary, or whether there was a
causal relationship between telehealth services and the measured results. However, the
research did find that greater racial and ethnic diversity in an area was correlated with a higher
average number of ER visits and hospitalizations among patients who use telehealth and those
who do not use it, indicating a need for greater efforts to diminish health inequities in the state.

The Oregon Health Authority’s updated dashboard shows that private insurers pay a wide range
of amounts for the same procedures to different hospitals across the state, reports The Lund
Report. The dashboard, which covers 120 procedures, shows that even the same hospitals
received varying amounts from insurers for performing the same medical operations. Advocates
state that consumers could use the dashboard to consider which health insurance plans to buy
and to select a hospital when planning to have a certain procedure.

Connecticut's Black population has a higher mortality rate than its white population, reports
WSHU. The report found that Black infants are three times more likely to die than white infants
in the state. Furthermore, between 2017 and 2022, Black residents were much more likely to die
from preventable illnesses like COVID-19, kidney disease, and heart disease. The report
suggests that discrimination in health care settings, poor housing, financial and food insecurity,
and other upstream factors contribute to higher mortality rates among Black residents.

Approximately two million unnecessary health care services were delivered in Colorado in 2021,
leading to $134 million in costs, reports Health Payer Intelligence. The top five low-value
services provided were opioid prescriptions, Vitamin D deficiency screening, prostate cancer
screening, imaging tests for eye disease, and coronary angiographies; these services combined
contributed almost two-thirds of Colorado’s low-value care spending (63%). Commercial health
plans were most likely to spend on low-value health services.