How Easy is it for Insurers to Ration Care?
U.S. corporate laws also make it difficult for individual insurers and hospitals to reduce the use of technologies with variable payments: insurers and hospitals are not permitted to interfere with the medical judgment of physicians. State laws also require insurers to pay for any service deemed medically necessary by a physician.
This is from a paper by Baicker and Chandra, via Austin Frakt, who tracts down some legal precedents, but still wonders whether this is actually true? Kevin Outterson, also at The Incidental Economist, thinks insurers have found ways around the legal impediments.
Really, no influence over doctor’s decisions?
http://www.ncpathinktank.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=21583
I can see this issue, both state and federal, being a big story in the media in a few years.