Unwilling to leave the challenge of addressing the troubling prior authorization practices of many health insurers, officials in some states are trying to take matters into their own hands.
Last year, lawmakers in 29 states considered 90 different bills to impose varying prior authorization requirements on health insurers serving their constituents. Among the changes these proposals seek: shorter response times for requests for authorization and mandatory public reporting of insurers’ prior authorization activity. In addition, last year five states required insurers to engage in a practice known as gold carding: waiving prior authorization for requested items and services for individual providers who have established a record of seeing their requests approved at an especially high rate.
Learn more about what states are doing, and trying to do, about prior authorization from the KFF Health News article “States Target Health Insurers’ ‘Prior Authorization’ Red Tape.”