Provisions that allow Medicare drug plans to deny drug coverage to patients when they suspect prescription misuse was being proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). However, the American Medical Association (AMA) were against the proposed policy. The AMA stated its concerns that the policy would instead prevent patients from receiving Medicare Part D coverage for medications prescribed to them by their physician. The AMA were strongly against this idea and making their statement that "Physicians, not health insurers, have the expertise to make decisions about which medications a patient should receive."
Suggestions from the AMA include encouraging health insurers to fully share information so that prescribing physicians will know all of a patients' medications, increasing the funding for prescription drug monitoring programs, as well as for upgrades that provide real time prescription information to physicians at the point of care.
The AMA held strong in their beliefs that giving health insurers the ability to stop insuring medications prescribed by a physician is not the answer in dealing with the misuse of prescription drugs.