United Healthcare Must Face ALS Patient’s Ventilator Policy Suit

United Healthcare Services Inc. failed to defeat a proposed class action saying it wrongly refuses to cover noninvasive ventilators that help ALS patients combat deterioration in muscle control that affects their ability to breathe.

The insurer said the case should be dismissed because the complaint failed to identify the health plan provision authorizing coverage of these ventilators, and because the patient who filed suit improperly brought duplicative claims under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

Judge Hernán D. Vera disagreed in an order issued Monday in the US District Court for the Central District of California.

The plaintiff, ALS patient ...