Thank you for participating in our robust and well-attended town hall on Jan. 6. If you were not able to join, you can watch the town hall for yourself at this link. Please watch for our next town hall coming in February.

With the legislative session in its second week, we’re already focused on numerous issues and committee hearings, not to mention singular events like the governor’s State of the State update. One issue that has stood out early in session is balance billing for ground ambulance services.

Washington state has been a leader in working to lower health care costs and protect patients from burdensome, unexpected medical bills. In 2020, for instance, our state was one of the first in passing a bill to ban balance billing for emergency health care services and certain procedures.

Balance billing is what happens when a provider bills you for the difference between the provider’s charge and the payment amount allowed by your insurance company. For example, if the provider’s charge is $100 and the allowed amount is $70, the provider may bill you separately for the remaining $30. Shortly after our state took this important step to prevent these surprise medical bills from arriving in your mailbox, Congress also took action to prohibit this practice for certain health care services. But it didn’t account for all possibilities.

As chair of the Senate Health & Long Term Care Committee, I have made it a priority to expand the prohibition on balance billing to further ensure that patients in this state are not saddled with other health care bills that were not planned for or expected. Over many months last year, a diverse group of stakeholders met many times to develop legislation to ban the practice of balance billing for ground ambulance services. I commend all who collaborated on this effort, including our hard-working emergency transport service providers who are there for us when we need help the most. To ensure that these services continue to be available in every corner of our state, our stakeholders group was able to accomplish the goal of banning balance billing on ground ambulance services while also ensuring that our EMS providers can continue to operate.

The result was SB 5986, a bill I introduced last week to prohibit balance billing for ground ambulance service.  I visited our EMS providers in Vancouver, AMR Ambulance, for an update and up-close look last fall at all they do to ensure that when you face an emergency, help is at hand. I applaud all of our first responders who work so hard to be there for us, and I appreciate our local first responders who helped provide input and feedback into the draft legislation I introduced last week.

As the bill’s sponsor, it’s now my responsibility to shepherd this important bill to final passage. To that end, I am grateful to the members of the Senate Health & Long Term Care Committee who joined me this week in passing the bill out of committee unanimously so it can be heard by the Ways & Means Committee for further consideration. I will keep you posted on my work on this issue and on the progress of this important bill.

There are numerous issues ahead that I am focusing on and I look forward to sharing more in my next newsletter.

All my best,