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Illinois has fined health insurance company Quartz $500,000 for failing to adequately cover substance use disorders and mental health treatments.
Quartz sells health insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act exchange at Healthcare.gov and off-exchange in parts of northwestern Illinois.
The Illinois Department of Insurance announced Wednesday that it had fined the insurance company for violating federal and state laws that require insurers to provide the same level of coverage for mental health and substance use disorder care as they do for traditional medical and surgical care.
Attempts to reach Quartz for comment Thursday were not immediately successful. Country safety The department said Quartz has paid the fine and agreed to take corrective action.
The state found in a market examination that Quartz incorrectly required prior authorization for substance use disorder claims; prior authorization is required for access to Naltrexone, which is a drug to reduce cravings for alcohol and opioid use disorder; only allowed consumers to have 30 days of anti-anxiety and antipsychotic medications instead of 90; and prevented patients with asthma or other life-threatening bronchial diseases from refilling prescriptions for inhalers just days before they were due for refills.
The market conduct test was carried out in 2021 and 2022.
“With so many of us focusing on health and wellness at the start of the new year, this is an ideal time to remember health insurance companies about the importance of access to care, especially for people struggling and seeking treatment mental health and substance use disorder,” Gov. JB Pritzker said in a news release.
2023 Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
citation: Illinois fines health insurance company $500,000 for violations (2023, January 13) retrieved January 13, 2023 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-01-illinois-fines-health-company-violations.html
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