Patients, advocates and researchers welcome regulations but argue rules don’t go nearly far enough to tackle scale of problem
A new set of rules from the Biden administration seeks to rein in private health insurance companies’ use of prior authorization – a byzantine practice that requires people to seek insurance company permission before obtaining medication or having a procedure.
The cost-containment strategy often delays care and forces patients, or their doctors, to navigate opaque and labyrinthine appeals.
The administration’s newly finalized rules will require insurance companies who work in federal programs to speed up the approval process and make decisions within 72 hours for urgent requests. The regulations will also require companies to give a specific reason as to why a request was denied and publicly report denial metrics. The regulations will primarily go into effect in 2026.
Sure, because there job is to ease the monetary burden of suffering events.
Their job is to extract profits from people who need healthcare, and ease the monetary burden on the business by denying as many claims as possible to increase profits. Preventative care would benefit them in the long run along with the population that they 'serve', but short term profits don't care about the long term.