Prohibits health insurance companies or other payors from including in physician participation agreements any provisions that restrict or prevent a physician from charging patients reasonable administrative or operational fees to support overhead.

Plain-English Summary: Rhode Island Primary Care Preservation Act

This bill would prevent health insurance companies from stopping doctors from charging patients certain extra fees for administrative or operational costs. Right now, when doctors sign contracts with insurance companies to become "in-network" providers, those contracts sometimes include rules that restrict what additional charges doctors can bill to patients. This bill would make those types of contract restrictions illegal in Rhode Island.

In practical terms, this means doctors could charge patients fees to help cover the costs of running their practice — things like office staff, billing systems, patient communication tools, or other day-to-day business expenses — even if their insurance contract previously would have prohibited it. The bill specifically limits these fees to ones that are "reasonable," though the legislation does not define exactly what that means in dollar terms.

This bill would directly affect doctors (particularly primary care physicians), health insurance companies, and patients in Rhode Island. Insurers would lose the ability to block these types of fees through their provider contracts. Patients could potentially see new fees added to their medical visits that weren't there before, even when seeing an in-network doctor. Doctors, on the other hand, would have more flexibility to recover overhead costs that they say have become increasingly difficult to manage under standard insurance reimbursement rates.

The bill has been introduced and referred to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, meaning it is in the early stages of the legislative process and has not yet been voted on.