SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Democratic California State Senator Dave Cortese proposed a bill on Monday that he says will advance the way the state deals with addiction recovery treatment.
Cortese says insurers can arbitrarily deny additional medical treatment for patients still in recovery, and says his California Residential Substance Use Disorder Treatment Patient Safety and Fairness Act would take away financial incentives that cut treatments short.
Through their insurance, patients in the state would be entitled to addiction treatment criteria developed by the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
“California law requires that insurance companies cover treatment for addiction recovery, yet many are still denied the critical services they need to survive,” Cortese said. He added, “We must remove the financial incentives that exist for health plans to deny patients’ life-saving treatment.”
