The article is about claims, which are a difficult thing than pre-auths.

There are some restrictions on pre-auths and when an insurer can require one. If you are in need of immediate care to save your life, they are not required and your provider will give you care before even telling your insurance company about it.

The grey area with pre-auths is with nonemergency care that could lengthen someone’s life. There are requirements by law for appealing these denials but yes, this is where those stories about “I can’t get my cancer treatment” come from.

This is not the situations in the article, though.

What’s shitty about the actions in the article is that many people don’t even realize that erroneous health insurance denials are common and they just accept the denial and pay out of pocket. It is very common to get a denial, send in a challenge like “no this should be covered” and then they pay.