ELK COUNTY, Pa (WJAC) \u2014 A proposed Pennsylvania bill aimed at helping EMS agencies with insurance reimbursement is still waiting for action.<\/p>\n
House Bill 1152 would require insurers send payments for 911 emergency services directly to the EMS provider, rather than the patient.<\/p>\n
Prime sponsor Representative Jill Cooper says the bill is designed to help EMS agencies cover the cost of being ready to respond to emergencies as many are shutting down across the state.<\/p>\n
The bill was introduced last year and is still in the House Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee.<\/p>\n
Rep. Cooper says lawmakers have discussed possible amendments, but there continues to be disagreements preventing it from moving forward.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m not optimistic at this point because it’s so late in the legislative session. But I don’t know; I’m not sure what they’re planning to run yet.”<\/p>\n
6 News also spoke with a local agency about the bill’s continued standstill.<\/p>\n
“The time is ticking and the longer it ticks, the more Pennsylvania services are going to close and it’s going to increase response times and people will die,\u201d said Dr. John Lobb, president of Bennetts Valley Ambulance Service.<\/p>\n
If the bill doesn’t move forward this upcoming session, Rep. Cooper says she expects to reintroduce it next year.<\/p>\n
She said a similar bill was also introduced in the state Senate, giving the proposal a potential path forward in both chambers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ELK COUNTY, Pa (WJAC) \u2014 A proposed Pennsylvania bill aimed at helping EMS agencies with insurance reimbursement is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-291721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}