Interview Summary:

In a highly engaging interview with Bob Sansevere from The BS Show, Solidarity Healthshare President and Co-Founder Chris Faddis discusses the topics in healthcare that plague Americans from rising costs to outrageous facility fees. Read the transcript or listen below.

Interview Audio:

Bob Sansevere (00:00):

We are joined by Christopher Faddis, co-founder and president of the nonprofit Healthcare Sharing Ministry Solidarity HealthShare, which is an ethical, affordable alternative to traditional health insurance and is faithful to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Chris, I want to ask you to start off about what hospitals are doing. They are charging a facility fee for routine care and it’s adding billions across the country. What exactly does that mean? You mean I walk in, I have to pay to just walk through the door and they’re putting on a charge for that? Is it like when you buy tickets online, there’s a fee for buying the ticket? I mean, just for walking in, there’s a fee for going because somebody has to mop the floor. What does it mean? What’s a facility fee?

Chris Faddis (00:44):

Yeah, it’s interesting because facility charges are standard part of industry billing. Typically, if I get a simple procedure done in the doctor’s office, it’ll cost less because it’s not in the doctor’s office. But I go to a surgical center, I go to a hospital, it’s a higher cost, and that includes a facility fee. And what they’re doing now is they’re sort of splitting that charge to charge an additional facility fee to try to gain, to gain dollars. And the issue is, of course, that first of all, it’s not accepted billing practice by Center for Medicare Services, which is sort of the standardization of all billing practices. And so most insurances aren’t going to pay it. The Medicare certainly aren’t going to pay it. And what’s happening is they’re trying to stick the patients with these facility fees. The other side that’s really concerning is that we’ve talked before about the No Surprises Act, and one of the rules of the No Surprises Act is that somebody, a patient is supposed to be given an estimate as long as they know a service is taking place 72 hours or more before the service takes place. They’re supposed to be getting an estimate, a good faith estimate from the hospital. And that is supposed to include these kind of facility fees or should include any facility fees. And it sounds like from the evidence that it’s not, so yeah, they assume the charge is a mistake and people see it and they’re like, oh, that must be an error. And the hospitals apparently are not even letting people dispute it

Bob Sansevere (02:10):

And they get away

Chris Faddis (02:15):

With this. It’s a real concern.

Bob Sansevere 02:18):

Well, if people are paying directly, they do. I know that. Well, solidarity health share, you’ve got a great partner in AMPS, American Medical, I don’t want to screw it, Solutions, Medical Solutions. And they will be a advocate for you to negotiate these down. But a lot of people, if they’re doing it on their own, they don’t have someone being an advocate for you. And that could be problematic.

Chris Faddis (02:45):

Right, right. Yeah, it is. I mean, I think that’s the issue, right? Is who’s going to fight that battle for you and how are you going to argue this in general? I think people are afraid of the hospital systems and afraid of their billing offices. They use very aggressive tactics typically. Like you might be calling to dispute that charge and saying, well, I disagree with this. I don’t want to pay it, and whatever. And then meanwhile you get a collection letter that says, if this doesn’t get resolved within 15 days, we’re going to send this to a collection agency and we’re going to report your credit. And so people get scared and just for a better outcome, they just say, well, I’ll just pay it. It’s not worth it. And some of these are maybe only $200, maybe they’re a thousand dollars. It’s a lot of money to most people, but some people it’s, it’s like I’d rather pay it.

(03:36):

But if you add it up, yeah, it becomes billions and trillions of excess costs that’s being levied on the American people. And the reality is that that cost, it’s also not being accounted for when you think of the already rising prices of healthcare. So we’re not including this additional cost now that is being added on top of that. So yeah, it’s a real concern. This is one of the things we fight every day. And again, it’s part of what we’re good at. But again, we’ve got a massive machine behind us helping us do that. And not just our team, but like you mentioned our partners and we have computerized algorithms and systems that tell us what’s fair and reasonable. We know all the codes and the reasons for things. We know the law behind medical billing. And so those are all benefits that the American consumer doesn’t have. And I think this is another issue once again where hospital systems unfortunately are taking advantage of consumers.

Bob Sansevere (04:36):

Well, here’s another one I got for you, and I’m wondering if Star Tribune is the big newspaper in Minnesota. They had a story the other day about Allina Health, which is a big, a big health service company in the state. They got hospitals, they’ve got a lot of doctors in their group, which I’m just wondering, that’s why I wanted to ask, have you found this? They have their own basically cut out the middleman. They have a subsidiary that’s their debt collector that goes after people aggressively. And it’s not A. You’re not getting a call from Allina. You’re getting it from the something called Accounts Receivable Services. And in the story, it talks about how people are more inclined to get scared and pay this Accounts Receivable Services than Allina because they’re afraid that they are going to wind up having a credit rating destroyed.

Chris Faddis (05:22):

Oh yeah. And that’s a big deal. A lot of these systems own collection agencies that are so it looks like it’s coming from the collection agency, but it’s a billing office across the parking lot from the hospital’s billing office. And it’s the same people. And yeah, it’s not uncommon. It’s unfortunate. In fact, even a lot of what nonprofit healthcare systems that are required in order to get the nonprofit status, one of the requirements is that they have to do more to serve people who need help that the poor, all those kinds of things. There was a big story a couple of years ago, one of the largest nonprofit health systems bought a huge collection agency that was actually known for being sued for very aggressive tactics in collections. And this hospital system bought that collection agency. So what good is that hospital system doing to the poor unless they were planning to forgive all the debt, which they didn’t. So yeah, that’s a real issue. And it’s one of the games they play to scare you into paying these over abundant charges. And you and I have talked about balance billing before, but as you know, and your family has dealt with balance billing, right? Solidarity’s had to, and I hope, I’m sure it’s okay to say that we’ve had to stand up for your family,

(06:40):

It ‘s for a few years now that we continue to fight. And the reality is that that whole game, the game they play, oftentimes our members are tricked into paying something because of that game, because they get scared. And in the midst of this back and forth between us and the hospital, they send someone else after ’em. And that’s a real issue. The other side of this is that bad debt collectors out there who are buying, so hospitals may have said, okay, fine, we’re not going to charge for this service or we’re going to reduce the fee or whatever it is. They will then go pick up that old debt and try to collect on it even though it’s already been waived by the hospital. And we often have to come in and tell the member, please don’t pay that. That debt’s been written off and we have to prove it and get that out. Otherwise people double pay for something because these people, and it’s just a, it’s actually to me a travesty that medical systems are working with collection agencies like this. I think certainly we all believe the medical systems should get paid for the services they do and make sure they can pay their people and earn a good wage and all that. But I think this predatory practices in healthcare is a huge scores on our system. Well,

Bob Sansevere (07:47):

Well, the one thing that I’ve noticed I knew about AMPS because they have intervened. I mean, Allina and other systems were paid, but it wasn’t enough in their mind. When you talk about balanced bills, I mean that’s a fair payment to these companies and it’s what insurance companies would pay the traditional insurance companies. I mean similar to what they pay, but they have not been as accepting of health sharing. And that’s a problem they need to be because they will get paid, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough for these groups. And it’s frustrating. And I want to mention very quickly, I mentioned that we would, Walmart, and this just broke this week, Walmart is closing 51 of their medical, they have clinics in 51 locations. Illinois is the only one that would be a northern place. It was one there. The rest are all in the south, but they’re shutting those down. They opened them to give good affordable healthcare to people, but it’s got too expensive for ’em and they’re shutting down their telehealth and it’s unfortunate. But I wanted to ask you, you have what I consider a very good telehealth called Dial Care. Most of them are doing fine. There’s some that just, they open, they close because they just don’t have the right infrastructure. Is that the problem?

Chris Faddis (09:00):

Yeah, I think that’s part of the problem. I think a lot of them are, their business models are maybe a little bloated in how they’re approaching it and their cost structure is bloated. I think the ones like Dial Care who have figured out how to minimize the costs are doing really well. In fact, Dial Care is doing some expansion on their services and we’re getting ready to work with them to do some customization on our program. But yeah, there’s been plenty of these telehealth providers who have gone under. Part of that was before Covid, it was still limited on who would actually participate in telehealth as far as insurance companies and things. And Covid sort of opened the door. And I think some of this, the demand for telehealth has gone down a little bit from the spikes of Covid, so I’m sure that’s affecting it with Walmart.

(09:47):

I don’t know enough about their business, but the healthcare business. But a lot of these big organizations that try to solve it, I think they have good intentions, but they try to solve it with some really big, bloated costs involved. And again, it’s difficult. You’ve got the hospital systems getting paid more for doctors that they own that are under their system than an independent provider. And Walmart doesn’t own any hospitals, so that would affect your contracting. There’s lots of areas of issue there and there’s plenty of money still to be made in the clinic model. It’s just these models don’t always work. Similar thing happened with Amazon not long ago where they got out of that world. I think people expect there to be a lot more room in the budget. So it’s a lot more fluff in there.

Bob Sansevere (10:34):

Just not there. Well, Chris, thank you so much. Chris Faddis, the president and co-founder of Solidarity HealthShare. Check it out at solidarityhealthshare.org.

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