@samanthaschneidermd Tired of insurance telling us no? Same. So I took my white coat to the Capitol. 💅🏼🩺💼 #CutTheRedTape #PriorAuthIsABuzzkill #DermsWhoAdvocate #NevadaLegislature ♬ original sound - Samantha Schneider, MD

This morning looked a little different for me.

Instead of being in clinic with patients, I was standing in front of the Nevada State Legislature asking for something simple: the ability to care for my patients without insurance companies standing in the way.

As a board-certified dermatologist, my job is to diagnose skin conditions, create treatment plans, and help you stay healthy—whether that’s treating eczema, managing acne, or finding skin cancer early. But more and more often, those decisions aren’t staying between doctor and patient. They’re being delayed or denied by a process called prior authorization.

What Is Prior Authorization?

Prior authorization (PA) is when doctors have to ask an insurance company for permission to:

• Prescribe a medication
  
  
• Continue a treatment you’re already doing well on
  
  
• Order a procedure
  
  
• Sometimes even schedule certain visits
  
  

Instead of moving forward with the care we know you need, we’re stuck filling out forms, making phone calls, and waiting days—or weeks—for an outside company to approve what your physician has already determined is appropriate.

Why This Matters to You

Prior authorization isn’t just paperwork. It affects real people with real conditions.

It can mean:

• Delays in treating painful rashes
  
  
• Interruptions in skin cancer care
  
  
• Patients going without medications that were already working
  
  
• Extra stress, time, and cost for families
  
  

Creating your treatment plan is my job. I know your history, I’ve examined your skin, and I’ve trained for years to make these decisions. An insurance company that has never met you shouldn’t be the one deciding what care you receive.

Standing Up for Patients

That’s why I went to the legislature—to support prior authorization reform and to advocate for something that should be obvious:

Good medicine should not come with a permission slip.

I was there for your face, for your moles, for your rosacea, for your skin cancer checks, and for every patient who has ever been told to “wait for approval” when they needed help now.

Caring for patients doesn’t just happen in the exam room. Sometimes it means showing up in our local government and speaking out for the right to practice medicine the way it was meant to be practiced—patient first.

We’ll keep fighting for you.

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Want the transcript for this video instead?  

 I'm just a dermatologist who stood in front of the Nevada State legislature asking them to please let me treat patients without insurance playing. Doctor Dr. Schneider. I'm a board certified dermatologist and I spent my morning this morning not with patients, but at the Nevada State Legislature, where I was helping to support a bill that will work on prior authorization reform.

So what does that mean? Prior authorization is when we, the doctors have to ask the insurance companies for permission to give you the patient, their medication, to continue their medication, to do certain treatments, to even see you as a patient. So I went to the legislature to ask them to please stop this PA madness because guess what?

Creating your treatment plan. That's my job. So I spent my morning taking part in our local government for your face, for your moles, for your skin cancer, because good medicine should not come with a permission slip.