Many states have passed laws limiting prior authorization. Physicians hate prior authorization and claim insurers and health plans use it to ration care. I tend to be more sympathetic to prior authorization because in an industry where patients are insulated from the cost of their care, there needs to be some checks and balances over unnecessary care and care that is unnecessarily expensive. I often tell the story about the time my wife unknowingly tried to schedule a CT scan at a hospital outpatient clinic near our house.
Category: Medicare
Thursday Links
- To deal with misleading ads in the Medicare Advantage open enrollment period, CMS has tried every possible remedy except the obvious one: let doctors advise their own patients about the choices.
- Inequality in life expectancy: “the least-educated Americans have seen their death rates surge in a way that more-educated Americans have not.
- A Trump executive order requires giving consumers full pricing information for medications. It looks like the courts are going to force the Biden administration to enforce that rule.
- Covid vaccine mandates are back – in red state Texas!
- Food stamp spending has doubled in the last four years.
- David Friedman wonders if he can escape death.
Friday Links
- Kaiser: Insurers deny medical claims more often than you think.
- Enthoven in Health Affairs: likes our new Medicare book. A “must read.”
- Tom Miller: why most health policy is déjà vu.
- Why is mental health declining for young women? (NYT)
- Are Biden’s regulations the reason for a 20% drop in blood tests for transplant patients? (WSJ)
- How can you do a placebo-controlled drug trial if the disease affects only a few dozen people? (WSJ)