Dear Editor,
I heartily support H.766, the bill to ease provider burdens, most notably the process our insurance companies have inflicted on us called “prior authorizations.” As someone who nearly died from a life-threatening disease largely because these prior authorizations kept standing in the way of care, I know what it means to be on the receiving end of this chokehold.
I heartily applaud Rep. Alyssa Black (D-Essex), a primary sponsor of the bill, when she said “Payers pay. Clinicians treat. That’s all.” She’s right and that’s all that it should be, but it should also be remembered that insurance companies are not “payers.” They are a middle layer, a distributor. We the people are the payers. We are forced to pay them insane costs to cover us during medical need. We could easily live without them. We have public programs in this country — Medicaid, Medicare, the VA system, for example — that have been proving this beyond a reasonable doubt for many decades.
The vice-president from BCBS who said in testimony, “Please be deliberate and fully informed about the impacts of the changes that folks are asking you to consider making. … When it comes to the cost of health care, there’s no room for error,” was hardly germane. It is this system he is a part of that takes so much from us for precious little in return, that stymies our access to care with roadblocks like prior authorizations, so they can keep more of our money for themselves, that is causing these atrocious health care costs where there is “no room for error.”
I support H.766 for the sake of physicians and patients. No one should be subjected to these ordeals for the simple need to get or give care.
Walter Carpenter
Montpelier
