New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has issued subpoenas to 16 major commercial health insurers in the state seeking information on how they decide to either authorize or deny coverage for expensive hepatitis C treatments, the Wall Street Journal reports. Schneiderman's office claims that thousands of patients may have been illegally denied coverage for hepatitis C drugs, and it wants to know whether insurers in the state accurately disclosed what they consider medically necessary.
"We feel the subpoena is overly broad, and doesn't take into consideration the impact of the excessive pricing of the drug," a spokeswoman for the New York Health Plan Association tells the WSJ. The New York probe comes in the wake of class-action lawsuits filed against state Medicaid departments challenging decisions to deny coverage for new hepatitis C treatments to patients and prisoners. Article