Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced an end to the delays caused by health insurance prior authorizations.
During Tuesday’s televised White House cabinet meeting, Kennedy said, “We convened the insurance companies representing 280 million Americans and got them to agree — most of them by January of 2026, two months from now — to remove prior authorization for all the procedures we want them removed from.”
“And that means that American patients at the point of care will be able to get an answer immediately,” he added. “If your doctor says you need knee surgery, you will know before you leave that doctor’s office whether your insurance company will pay for it or not.”
For those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with this process, a prior authorization works like this: Your doctor decides you need a certain procedure or therapy or medication. Before the insurance will cover it, the doctor must contact your insurance company and justify his decision to the satisfaction of the insurance company. Without this prior authorization, the insurance will not cover you, which means you will have to pay for it yourself or forgo whatever it is your doctor believes you need.
Many people get turned down. The best-case scenario is merely an infuriating delay as you wait until the insurance company decides. More than once, my wife and I have arrived at an appointment only to be told, “Sorry, the prior authorization hasn’t come through yet.”
It’s frustrating, and while I can’t think of a time when my wife did not receive an approved prior authorization, the inconvenience and stress of the waiting and worrying is not helpful. Thanks to the government, especially Obamacare, we’re all paying through the nose for insurance, so why is our health placed in the hands of bureaucrats with an incentive to say no?
I think we can all agree that when discussing valid, credentialed healthcare providers and not quacks, medical professionals should be making these decisions. If there’s some concern over fraud or kickbacks (e.g., prescribe this, and we’ll give you a 20 percent kickback), that will show up in a pattern and should be considered a different matter entirely.
Kennedy and President Trump will receive no credit for this. Look around at all the corporate media stories covering this great news. Oh, wait — there are none. Oddly enough, even the fangirls championing the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s assassin, Luigi Mangione, have nothing to say, though the evidence appears to show Mangione was motivated specifically by the issue of insurance companies refusing to grant authorizations for procedures, tests, and medications.
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