Blue Cross, HCA no closer to resolving differences

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

HARR

Almost a year after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee removed HCA, parent company of River Park Hospital, from its health care network, the two companies are no closer to resolving their differences than when they began, Blue Cross Blue Shield senior vice president for government programs Ron Harr told the Breakfast Rotary Club yesterday.

“If it were up to the local administrators here in McMinnville, we could probably settle most of our differences and move on with life. It’s still our hope we can do that at the corporate level,” Harr said.

The dispute between the two corporations began in earnest last December when Blue Cross Blue Shield decided to no longer to include HCA hospitals in its health care network due to what it claims is the hospital chain’s excessive rate increases.

According to Harr, his company has for years accepted rate increases from a number of hospitals and hospital chains, but it just so happened to be HCA last year that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

As a result of the dispute, local customers of Blue Cross Blue Shield wishing to receive care at River Park are now subject to pay significantly higher out-of-network fees. Not wishing to strand local Blue Cross Blue Shield policy holders, who make up a majority of the hospital’s customers, River Park has waived all such out-of-network fees for the rest of the year. This move was praised by Harr, who said it was good for his company’s customers and helped to make the dispute less of an issue than it could have been.

Nevertheless, he said his company is still particularly concerned about how the ongoing dispute will further affect their customers in rural counties, such as Warren County, for whom the local HCA hospital is their only health care option.

“Places like Nashville and Chattanooga are competitive markets where people have choices about where they can go. We favored separate negotiations for those communities with only one hospital, but HCA said no, that they wanted them all together,” said Harr.

As a not-for-profit company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, he said, is committed to doing everything in its power to keep health insurance, and by extension health care, affordable for all Tennesseans.

“Like everyone else, we are very seriously concerned about the cost of health insurance. This is an issue that needs to be addressed,” Harr said. “Ours is a state with a poor state of health and some of the highest costs in the country. We’re working hard to help control these expensive health insurance costs – that’s what led to the impasse with HCA.”