Modern Healthcare (5/22, Robeznieks) reported, "Arguing that it places physician practices under the same regulations as banks, credit card companies, and mortgage lenders, a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington seeking to block the Federal Trade Commission from imposing on doctors its 'red flags' rule which deals with preventing, detecting, and mitigating identity theft." Specifically, "the lawsuit, filed by the American Medical Association, American Osteopathic Association, and the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, states that the rule requires 'financial institutions' to implement a written identity-theft prevention and detection plan and notes that the FTC had announced that the physicians had until June 1 to comply."

        Starting "June 1, doctors will have to follow the so-called 'red flag rule,' which stems from a 2003 law aimed primarily at financial institutions, but is worded broadly to include all businesses that extend credit to individuals," MedPage Today (5/21, Walker) reported. "Under the regulation, medical providers must examine their institution's risk for insurance fraud and put in place a tailored program meant to respond to 'red flags' that alert them to the possible breaches in the privacy of patient data. Doctors could face fines of up to $2,500 per violation for failure to comply."

        According to Medscape (5/21, Lowes), the lawsuit contends that "physicians are already addressing privacy concerns under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and that the Red Flags Rules would impose an unnecessary administrative burden on them, not to mention interfere with the physician-patient relationship." The suit also argues that "physicians do not amount to creditors under the law simply because they allow patients to pay their bills after the time of service."

The AP (5/21) reports, "More than 40 percent of employers surveyed by the consulting firm Mercer expect health care reform to raise health care costs by a modest 2 percent or less next year. A quarter of those surveyed believe reform will add at least 3 percent to their projected costs for 2011, while 3 percent of the employers expect no increase." Notably, "benefit plans may see additional costs next year due to provisions in the reform law that ban lifetime maximums for benefits and extend coverage of young adult dependents on parental plans to age 26." Overall, "the actual impact will vary widely by company, depending in part on the employees it covers."

        Op-Ed: ObamaCare May Lead To Erosion Of Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage. John C. Goodman, president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis, writes in a Wall Street Journal (5/21,) op-ed that under the new healthcare law, millions of workers may find that their companies no longer provide health insurance coverage because employers may decide that the fines for violating the mandate to provide coverage are lower than the cost of said coverage. For instance, large firms like AT&T would still have a profit of $1.8 billion even after paying a $600 million fine for not covering employees. Goodman argues that ObamaCare will simply be a repeat of Massachusetts' failure to provide adequate coverage for residents, but on a national scale. He concludes that John McCain's proposal to provide tax relief to families rather than subsidize the current healthcare system was a much better solution.

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