Assembly Health Committee advances package to speed prior authorization, bar insurer interference in crisis behavioral health care

The California State Assembly Health Committee advanced a set of bills on April 22 intended to reduce administrative delays tied to prior authorization and to protect timely access to behavioral‑health and other medically necessary care.

The special order of business convened to consider bills that proponents said will reduce delays that can harm patients, from cancer and chronic‑disease care to psychiatric and substance‑use emergencies. Committee Chair Assemblymember Rob Bonta and multiple authors framed the package as efforts to center patient care and require that utilization reviews be timely and conducted by clinicians with matching expertise.

Committee context: the package included measures to prohibit prior authorization for inpatient mental‑health or substance‑use emergency admissions (AB 384, Connolly); require same‑specialty peer‑to‑peer reviewers in appeals (AB 510, Addis); extend approved prior‑authorization durations to a year or the physician’s prescribed duration for continuing treatment (AB 539, Schiavo); bar insurers from relying on their own reviewer panels to prematurely cut addiction treatment (AB 669, Haney); shorten turnaround times for urgent and non‑urgent authorizations (AB 512, Herabedian); provide up to 12 initial physical‑therapy visits without prior authorization (AB 574, Gonzales); remove network barriers so street‑medicine teams can directly order medically necessary services for people experiencing homelessness (AB 543, Gonzales); and other related measures on data and standards.

Why it matters: witnesses and authors described repeated examples where prior authorizations delayed care, diverted clinician time into paperwork and appeals, and produced avoidable clinical deterioration. Assemblymember…