Medical debt bill passes out of Senate Committee after major rewrites

INDIANAPOLIS — The Senate Health and Provider Services Committee unanimously passed Senate Bill 317 after several major rewrites.

”I’m cautiously optimistic,” said State Sen. Fady Qaddoura (D-Indianapolis), the lead author of the bill.

If signed into law, SB 317 would require all Indiana hospitals to give patients information about charitable assistance and payment plans. The bill stipulates a given plan must allow payments to be made over a period of at least two years. A monthly payment may not exceed 10% of a person’s monthly income.

”People do not choose to have medical debt because they never chose to have a cancer or a chronic illness,” Qaddoura said. ”It requires hospitals to engage with patients to design a payment plan that works for Hoosier families who can’t afford these services.”

One deleted provision would have required hospitals to provide good faith estimates to patients before they received services. Another would have required hospitals to stop reporting medical debt to consumer reporting agencies.

”We had to make some changes to the bill based on changes in federal law,” Qaddoura said.

The amended bill still protects wages from being garnished and prevents liens from being placed on homes due to medical debt, but only for Hoosiers who make less than 250% of the federal poverty level.

For a family of four, that means an amount less than $78,000 according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

”I don’t believe that people should be able to just waive their debt,” State Sen. Liz Brown (R-Fort Wayne) said. “I think as long as we can keep it where it is now, the amendment I thought was a good step in the right direction, but if the author of the bill tries to go backward and expand it, then it’s going to be a problem.”

The bill will need to pass a second reading on the Senate Floor next Wednesday and pass out of the Senate into the House next Thursday in order to survive.