Last week I wrote about California's ridiculous and expensive mandate that health plans provide translation services to their beneficiaries.  California has long had a translation mandate for health providers, but I noted that a similar mandate on insurers was even more absurd, because they cover U.S. residents (who should speak English) whereas a hospital might see a foreign visitor.

Well, you learn something new every day: apparently this new mandate on insurers will increase the costs of physician compliance, too.  How so?  In California, health plans have the pleasure of serving two different regulators: the Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) and/or the California Department of Insurance (CDI).  Health plans have some latitude in choosing which agency regulates their policies.  Under the law, each agency is making its own translation regulations!

Health plans' translating obligations trickle down to the doctors who serve their beneficiaries.  So, now a doctor has to know which regulator regulates the policies of each patient, and Medi-Cal (Medicaid) and Medicare have different translation standards too.  So, California doctors will soon be expected to adhere to four different sets of regulations for language assistance.

Note: knowing that a patient is covered by Blue Cross of California, for example, does not clarify which regulations pertain, because the patient might be covered by a Blue Cross DMHC-licensed policy, a Blue Cross CDI-licensed policy, a Blue Cross Medi-Cal managed care policy, or a Blue Cross Medicare Advantage or Medicare FFS (fee-for-service) policy!

According to the California Association of Physician Groups (CAPG), the cost of compliance may be as high as $120 million.  (Thanks to Bill Barcellona, VP Gov't Affairs for CAPG for this info from his group's December newsletter, which I received via e-mail but is not on CAHP's website yet.

While we're on the issue of health insurers' paperwork, I wonder if we could get the state to repeal the regulations that make the plans' English documents unreadable?