Medicare Advantage prior authorizations have few friends. Doctors hate them. Patients hate them. Politicians say they hate them and introduce bills to curb them. But how onerous are they really?

Health insurers now routinely refuse to pay for more expensive drugs or procedures until they have issued a “prior authorization.” Prior authorization is designed to prevent a physician from ...

Quinterno said laws trying to limit the scope of prior authorizations are trying to remove patients “caught up in a byzantine authorization process.” “They often suffer in the form of wasted ...

Medicare Advantage plans required prior authorizations about 125 times more often than regular Medicare in 2023, demonstrating the barriers MA patients face in accessing care. An analysis ...

Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, MPH, warns that prior authorization barriers are delaying critical cancer treatments and urges a regulatory fix for Stark Law restrictions on mailing oral oncolytics.

UnitedHealthcare will ease prior authorization requirements for its Medicare Advantage plans, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty said Thursday. In his first public remarks since the murder of ...

Quinterno said laws trying to limit the scope of prior authorizations are trying to remove patients "caught up in a byzantine authorization process." "They often suffer in the form of wasted time ...

Witty also promised that UnitedHealthcare would work to speed up turnaround times for approval of procedures and services for Medicare Advantage patients, and to reduce the overall number of prior ...

The Defense Health Agency has suspended a requirement for Tricare Prime patients in the West Region to get pre-authorization from their Tricare contract manager for specialty care. Defense ...

Lawmakers in the Senate's Health and Provider Services Committee heard about a proposed bill Wednesday, Jan. 22 – Senate Bill 480 – that would put restrictions on when insurance companies could ...

them mentality. In Massachusetts, health plans are required by state law to collaborate with physicians to develop medical necessity guidelines used for prior authorization. With this strong ...