The health insurance industry has developed a tool to control their costs and drive the providers and patients nuts. Originally the concept was used to help reduce the use of tests that were duplicates or unnecessary to provide good medical care. Now it has invaded into every corner of medicine, greatly increasing the cost to the medical provider in order to get approval for any test, procedure or medicine. To the patient and the provider, it just seems to be a nice way for the insurance companies to block care.
For patients with pain, many medications and procedures require prior authorization. It’s a timely process, filling out forms, calling a variety of people at insurance companies, writing down a number and making sure everyone has dotted the”I’s” and crossed the “T’s”. It certainly does not save any money and it costs a great deal of time. From a medical point of view, good practitioners tend to know what is appropriate and are not out to run up medical costs for their own profit. However, the rules always seem to favor the insurance company so they can keep more of your money.
Authorization Rules
Many of the rules that now exist surround the use of medications. The rules are usually written by a pharmacist and are based on drugs having similar modes of action. One generally assumed rule is that a patient must take a cheaper drug and the drug must fail in its use before a different drug can be used. The first problem with this is that professionals who do not treat patients and are not allowed to prescribe medications write the rules. They have no experience with patients, side effects and the need to run additional tests to check for problems. Many of the drugs recommended for pain, and are to be used first, are not even approved by the FDA for the specific condition. Some of the drugs have significant dangers, and may even be deadly. The state of Oregon required the use of Methadone, and suddenly the death rate from the drug skyrocketed. Pain experts warned against the move, but those who controlled the money did not listen.
The cost of medicine in the United States is a problem. Prior authorizations are really not the answer to control medical costs. Improved science and better knowledge would be a start. Furthermore, more control of the big pharmaceutical industry is necessary. They are making record profits, and on average they increased drug costs by at least 25% while inflation was 2%. The most important item would be a uniform medical record system, and all information on every person be kept in the same place. This simple tool would eliminate duplicate studies, questions about medications, and greatly ease and improve quality of care. It also would make it extremely easy to study particular diagnoses and solutions.