I am your constituent and I want you to know that recently a 16 year old boy was denied access to a residential drug addiction treatment facility by one of the largest commercial health insurance companies, United Healthcare. They said he could “You can learn to control your behaviors and stay at home.” He died of an overdose*. (Source Independent)
The AMA** reported that prior authorizations:
Always, often or sometimes delays patients’ accessing necessary care—94%.
Resulted in a serious adverse event leading to a patient being hospitalized—19%.
Resulted in a serious adverse event leading to a life-threatening event or requiring intervention to prevent permanent impairment or damage—13%.
Resulted in a serious adverse event leading to a patient’s disability, permanent bodily damage, congenital anomaly, birth defect or death—7%.
In addition, 53% of physicians with patients in the workforce said prior authorization affected their patients’ job performance.
Traditional Medicare is a public trust paying private providers, what is proposed in H.R. 3069/ S. 1506 and prior authorizations are extremely rare. Commercial insurance denies about 15% of prior authorizations and denies about 20% of ACA claims.
Moreover about 70% of Americans want Universal Healthcare. I want you to support and enact Universal Healthcare. In Congress it is now H.R. 3069/ S. 1506.
References:
*https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/unitedhealthcare-insurance-treatment-denied-death-b2741570.html
** https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/prior-authorization/exhausted-prior-auth-many-patients-abandon-care-ama-survey
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