Health Reform Bills may Not Protect Consumers from Treatment Denials

"Despite growing frustration with the way health insurers deny medical treatments, major healthcare bills pending in Congress would give patients little new power to challenge those sometimes life-and-death decisions," The Los Angeles Times reports. "Yet a patient's ability to fight insurers' coverage decisions could be more important than ever because Congress, in promoting cost containment and price competition, may actually add to the pressure on insurers to deny requests for treatment." The bills would require insurers to "cover everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions," making it "more difficult for insurers to control their costs, or 'bend the cost curve,' by avoiding sick people. That leaves insurers with the other big cost-containment tool: turning down requests to cover treatments."