Aetna Facing Class Action Over Depression Treatment Coverage

Health plan participants who sued Aetna Life Insurance Co. for failing to cover transcranial magnetic stimulation, a treatment for depression, got permission to proceed as a certified class (Meidl v. Aetna, Inc., D. Conn., No. 3:15-cv-01319-JCH, 5/4/17).

The lawsuit accuses Aetna of violating federal benefits law by wrongly classifying the treatment—which uses magnets to stimulate nerve cells in the brain that affect mood—as experimental and investigational and thus not covered. A federal judge May 4 certified the case as a class action to the extent that it sought an order forcing Aetna to reprocess individual claims for coverage ...