That title is stolen from the News Journal Opinion page today, whose writers I have to give some credit to today. And the Insurance Commissioner in question is our own Karen Weldin Stewart.
They highlight an odd bit of business, where Senator John D. Rockefeller, D-W.V has written to Delaware Blue Cross to ask them to provide detailed documentation of why they would deny cardiac testing prescribed by doctors to patients exhibiting symptoms of heart failure.
In the letter to Timothy Constantine, BCBSD’s chief executive officer, Rockefeller asked for information on procedures used to evaluate requests for the advanced stress tests and probed the insurer’s contract relationship with a Tennessee company, MedSolutions, that handles claims submitted in advance of the tests.
Rockefeller asked BCBSD to provide the material to the committee by April 16, including the amount of pre-authorization requests for diagnostic heart tests BCBSD has received in the last five years, how many it has approved, and how many it has denied.
Prior to Senator Rockefeller’s request, the News Journal itself did some detailed reporting on others in Delaware being denied these tests earlier this week and it took a US Senator — one not from Delaware, mind you — to ask enough questions to get BCBSD to actually call off these denials.
Where’s our IC? She claims to have gotten one complaint only and also doesn’t want to talk about this issues citing privacy issues. Except there have been multiple people who have been denied these tests who were willing to go on the record with the News Journal. The NJ OpEd:
It appears Commissioner Weldin-Stewart has dropped the ball here.
There has been plenty of information published, with input from physicians and patients, none of whom seem overly worried about violating their own privacy.
They simply want answers, which is what the insurance commissioner should be seeking.
It’s a bit disconcerting that a U.S. Senate committee is jumping into this fray while the state’s insurance commissioner continues to seek more information before beginning a full investigation.
Exactly. When the local paper and a US Senator are doing more to address a problem with an insurer in Delaware than the person who is paid taxpayer dollars to address these issues, I’ve got to ask — again — what this IC is actually doing for people in this state.