The largest U.S. helicopter air ambulance company has launched a full-frontal assault on competitors who sell annual “memberships.” Testifying before the National Council of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL) earlier this month, Air Methods executive v-p Chris Myers attacked these programs, accusing them of preying on the fears of senior citizens, for whom transports are already almost totally covered by federal Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements.
Myers criticized the AirMed Care Network specifically. The network is comprised of national operators, including Air Evac Lifeteam, Guardian Flight, Med-Trans Corp., and REACH Air Medical Services. These four operators fly from 320 bases in 38 states. It sells one to five-year memberships at prices ranging from $65 to $395, with seniors receiving a significant discount. AirMed said the memberships provide “peace of mind,” a message that resonates with buyers leery of receiving huge medevac bills.
Myers thinks those fears are unfounded. “Consumers are scared into thinking they will have a big bill and therefore need to buy a membership to avoid this imminent peril, from the same company that is transporting them. Medicare patients are disproportionately marketed to with tactics like special 'senior pricing.' The prevalence of these products being sold to seniors is cause for question about whether regulation is needed. If only 25 percent of the three million AirMed Care Network memberships are sold to seniors, this would make it the second-largest Medicare supplemental [insurance] product sold in the United States.” Myers also took aim at the upstart HeliMedic, which he characterized as run by “financial opportunists” and “has no verified operations.”
“It claims to cover the entire country in only minutes with only a few helicopters based out of Texas and California. Additionally, when you attempt to call the posted contact number it connects to no one. Yet they are still trying to sell air ambulance memberships at $500 for an individual or $1,500 for a family, even garnering local news coverage,” Myers charged. [AIN called the phone number listed on the HeliMedic website and was able to reach a person.-Editor]
He said that these policies were unnecessary and oversold due to a variety of market conditions: the majority of transports are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, more private insurers have in-network agreements with air ambulance companies (Air Methods claims in-network agreements with 50 percent of privately insured patients), and the low utilization rate of air medical services.
“From an actual utilization perspective, there are approximately 360,000 air medical transports a year, which represents 0.11 percent of the U.S. population. Given the extremely low utilization of all air medical services, one wonders why there are millions of annual memberships sold each year,” Myers said, further charging that some memberships have less than transparent terms.
He said the sales tactics used to sell memberships “puts undue pressure on patients and doesn’t fully disclose the financial terms of the insurance product they are purchasing, or the fact that it isn’t needed. Patients have sued membership providers for balance billing them when the patient received a legal settlement, and the membership provider tried to collect those funds.”