June 10, 2026 · Labor · 586 words · 3 speakers · 7 segments
Good morning everyone. The Senate Labor and Public Employment and Retirement Committee will come to order. We have 13 items on our agenda today. We'll start as a subcommittee. We don't have a quorum right now. Let's see. and we won't take up the for the audience we have a consent calendar of file items 5 6, 9, 11 and 13 are up for consent today and with that we're going to again go as a subcommittee I believe in the audience we have members file item number 1 AB 1048 by Mr. Chen please come up
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for your time. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to present AB 1048. I also want to thank the committee staff for their exceptional hard work, especially Jasmine for authorized payment reductions for medical providers who treat injured workers. Currently providers are seeing their reimbursement reduced without their knowledge due to a third party administrator or silent network arrangements. As a result, these reductions can often fall below the official medical fee schedule. However, most providers are not given the information they need to determine if these payments are truly valid. AB 1048 brings transparency to this process by ensuring providers may only receive the requested contract once within a 365-day period, ensuring that the process remains reasonable and manageable. This bill does not change the reimbursement rates or create new payment obligations It simply ensures that providers have access to the information necessary to understand why a payment was reduced and whether the reduction is valid Here to testify with us today
Thank you, committee members, for allowing me to testify on this bill. My name is Basil Besh. I'm an orthopedic surgeon who treats injured workers. AB 1048 is very modded by current Labor Code 4609 to demonstrate the justification for that reduction. The problem is that there's current ambiguity in that word demonstrate. You could provide a condition. AB 1048 is very narrow. It just seeks to clarify that, demonstrate that the contract must be produced. We've met with opposition and heard there you shouldn't be asking for it repeatedly and bogging down the system. The rest of the contentions that were brought up to us are not addressed by 1048. They are already existing scheduled, the statutory fee schedule for treating injured workers. This is not punitive. This is already existing law, and 1048 doesn't touch that. All 1040 and group out of L.A. was getting discounted consistently over a period of approximately three years. They could not get the contract to justify. We stepped in on behalf of the California orthopedics. That's a lot for an orthopedic group. That makes them think twice about treating injured workers.
Your time is up. Please come to a close.
Thank you, Madam. I respectfully request that you support 1040.
... of the bill, and I'll be brief. This is the second time you've heard AB 1048, and the reason why it's back before you is because of the substantial amendments that we took. And this is a result of the extension that we received last time, which was unanimous, and so we ask for your aye vote again. Thank you.
Thank you. Do we have support witnesses? Please step forward with your name. Okay, we'll move to opposition. Opposition witnesses, please step to the table. And while we wait for them to be seated, I'm going to have— Senator Cortese, Durazo, Laird, Laird here. Perfect. We have a quorum.