Chicago Tribune, Jan. 3, 2011

Dr. Lisa A. Rone (Dec. 24), in response to PPO requirements for pre-authorization for psychiatric care, suggests that the Illinois Psychiatric Society work with insurance companies, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, to resolve coverage issues.

But Blue Cross and Blue Shield is only one of more than 1,000 insurance companies in the US, each offering many separate insurance plans; and requiring pre-authorization for psychiatric care is only one of hundreds of ways in which those insurance companies interfere with medical decisions.

We need to get rid of insurance companies, not negotiate with them. Under a single-payer health care system, Improved and Expanded Medicare for All, everyone would have access to mental health care, as well as to all other necessary care. Decisions about treatment of mental illness, like all other medical decisions, would be in the hands of patients and doctors, not in the hands of insurance company bureaucrats. We would save the money needed to make the system financially sustainable not by denying care, but by negotiating fair prices for all goods and services, and by greatly decreasing the bureaucracy – such as the bureaucracy created for pre-authorizations and their denial – that currently consumes more than 30 percent of all health care dollars.

Anne Scheetz, MD, FACP, Chicago

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/chi-110103scheetz_briefs,0,6576949.story