Starting in February of this year, health insurance company Aetna Blue Cross Blue Shield plans set time limits on anesthesia coverage for surgeries and procedures. Now, days after widespread outrage across the health insurance industry, Aetna announced Thursday it is withdrawing the policy.
In mid-November, the American Society of Anesthesiologists issued a press release about the policy, which was scheduled to take effect in February in states including Connecticut, New York and Missouri.
"Aetna will refuse to pay for anesthesiologists' care if they submit bills with actual hours of care that exceed Aetna's limits," they wrote. "With this new policy, Aetna will not pay anesthesiologists for providing safe and effective anesthesia care to patients who may require additional attention because of difficult, unusual or complications from the procedure."
The letter didn't appear to attract public attention until this week, when several posts about the policy change began circulating on social media. The posts gained attention after UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in New York on Wednesday in what police said was a targeted attack.
A spokesman for Aetna's parent company, ElevanceHealth, told The New York Times that "misinformation" about the plan was one of the reasons Aetna pulled the plan.
"We realized, based on all the feedback we received in the past 24 hours, that our communication of the policy was not clear, which is why we are withdrawing our plans," said Janey Kiryluik, the company's vice president of communications.
Thompson's shooting shocked the public but also sparked discussion about the damage being done to the U.S. health care system and insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare. United Airlines in particular has been the subject of investigations by outlets such as Stat, which found that the company used algorithms to cut off payments and deny rehabilitative care to patients.
The rate at which insurance companies deny patient claims is a closely guarded secret, but ProPublica last year tracked a chronically ill patient's fight to get coverage from United Airlines. In some online forums, there was little sympathy for United and Thompson's death: Americans are saddled with at least $220 billion in medical debt that takes people's lives while insurance companies profit from it.
The shooter's motive was unclear, but shell casings found at the scene had the words "Delay" and "Deny" written on them. After the murders, health care companies such as CVS Health began removing web pages about their company leadership.