OPINION

Helping Aetna get religion: Doctor panel gives insurer a chance for salvation

Thanks to the insurer's settlement of a class-action lawsuit, doctors now can speak their piece directly. Nothing may change soon, but it's an encouraging sign.

Editorial. Feb. 2, 2004.

As any preacher knows, the target of evangelizing doesn't always respond the way you'd like. But at least you have a better shot than if that target never came to church.

So it's a positive step that on April 2, a committee of physicians and representatives of Aetna are scheduled to come together for the first of a regular series of face-to-face meetings -- at least two per year -- intended to bring the wayward company some religion.

The committee isn't expecting a miracle conversion, but it's willing to try. By filling in Aetna on the gospel of how physicians operate, the committee has a better chance than physicians ever had of effecting some sort of change on a company that many physicians feel has been ignorant of the Good Book -- the CPT manual, that is.

Aetna isn't totally a voluntary parishioner. The committee and these meetings are a result of the 97-page settlement, reached late last year, of a class-action lawsuit against Aetna over its cutting of physician claims, thereby interfering with recommended treatment to patients.

Still, the physician committee -- three members selected by the plaintiffs, three by the defense and three by the six doctors who had been selected by plaintiffs and defense -- is key to showing Aetna where it went wrong and fostering a better working relationship between physicians and the company.

Many physicians on the committee -- which meets with a group led by Aetna Medical Director William Popik, MD -- are involved with the AMA and their state medical societies, giving organized medicine a strong voice at the table.

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