A new Biden administration rule released Wednesday aims to streamline the prior authorization process used by insurers to approve medical procedures and treatments.
Prior authorization is a common tool used by insurers but much maligned by doctors and patients, who say it’s often used to deny doctor-recommended care.
Under the final rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, health insurers participating in Medicare Advantage, Medicaid or the ObamaCare exchanges will need to respond to expedited prior authorization requests within 72 hours, and standard requests within seven calendar days.
The rule requires all impacted payers to include a specific reason for denying a prior authorization request. They will also be required to publicly report prior authorization metrics.
Let’s not forget why Prior Authorization exists - shitty doctors who get kickbacks from labs or imaging facilities (or who own them) sending patients there unnecessarily in order to embezzle unecessary payments from Medicare and Medicaid (or even commercial) plans, draining risk pools for their own gain.
There are no good guys in America.
That is already illegal. Prior auth was not a necessary intervention for this problem.
So instead we have giant, mega corp insurance companie “non-profits” designing “AI” systems that auto deny 90% of all medical treatments and fight tooth and nail against the other 10%. All so they can drain money from patients and the goverment, injurying or directly killing milllions of americans every year for their own gain.
Neat fix.
Whats funny is you cite Medicare fraud. Medicare has a very short list of things they require preauths for. They are the easiest to work with. They do audits and if they spot any issues will take back all of the money. People are genuinely scared of that happening as it can be a lot at once if we did something wrong for a while.