The Toledo Blade has a good article with stories from patients whose crucial treatments, ordered by doctors, have been denied or delayed by insurance companies.
It begins with the harrowing story of Randy Steele, who died after the kidney-liver transplant that could have saved his life was stalled by his insurer.
Even if patients do not die as a result of these repeated denials and delays, they often end up unable to follow their doctors’ instructions and their health suffers seriously as a result.
The Blade conducted interviews with 100 physicians and did a survey of 920, which you can read more about by clicking the above link. The results of both the interviews and the survey show that doctors believe that insurers countermanding or stalling their orders is creating a crisis in health care. Of the survey’s 920 respondents, more than 99 percent said that insurers had interfered in their medical decision-making.
Clearly doctors are more qualified to make medical decisions than insurance companies. Any health care system that allows a bureaucrat working for an insurance company to make these calls will inevitably end up creating the tragedies that this article describes.
