ATLANTA — There’s an effort in Congress to make sure your health insurance company can’t deny you the care you need.
U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff is urging his colleagues to draft legislation to ban insurance companies from denying patients the care they’re prescribed by their doctors, as well as unnecessary delays due to prior authorizations.
According to the senator’s office, it’s part of his ongoing push to make sure Georgian families get the healthcare they need and to prevent any Americans from being abused by the current medical system denial process.
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“No American should be delayed or denied needed health care. It is unacceptable that Americans, who are paying record premiums to insurers making record profits in the world’s richest country, are nevertheless denied medically necessary care.” Ossoff said in a statement. “The abuse of ‘prior authorization’ practices has led to Georgians being denied life-saving medication and waiting months for the care they need— all at the whim of insurance companies. This requires us to act in defense of our constituents’ health.”
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Citing a recent study by Johns Hopkins University, Ossoff’s office said prior authorizations, where their insurance has to say ‘yes’ before patients get treatments already ordered by their medical providers was tied to “disease exacerbation, preventable hospitalization, prolonged hospital stay and lower rates of disease-free survival.”
Channel 2 Action News reported recently when Ossoff, citing the study, wrote to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about this issue.
Ossoff gave Oz an April 30 deadline for answers.
Wednesday’s legislative announcement is another step Ossoff wants the U.S. Senate to take to address Americans’ medical needs when it comes to being treated properly, rather than having care denied by insurance providers.
“I am calling on the Senate to take up legislation that will end the abusive denial or delay of medically necessary health care. At minimum, such legislation should hold insurance companies accountable for improper denials of care, mandate immediate response from insurance companies to requests for authorization, and prohibit retroactive denials of authorization except in cases of fraud or misrepresentation,” Sen. Ossoff also wrote in a letter to his colleagues, thanking Sen. Ron Wyden for his efforts to do so.
Ossoff is also a sponsor of a bipartisan bill to prevent insurance companies from delaying access to medical care, the Safe Step Act, introduced in February.
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