The country’s No. 1 health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, and another insurance giant—Cigna Healthcare—recently announced tentative steps to reduce the volume of care-delaying, time-wasting prior authorizations they require.

Starting this month, several UnitedHealthcare plans will start eliminating the prior authorization requirement for many procedure codes that the insurer says account for nearly 20% of its overall prior authorization volume. The company also said that next year it will implement a “gold card” program allowing those who qualify to follow a “simple administrative notification process for most procedure codes” instead of prior authorization. Cigna, meanwhile, said it is removing nearly 25% of medical services from prior authorization requirements.

The insurers’ efforts “begin to reduce the overwhelming volume of prior authorization requirements that are threatening patients’ health and wasting valuable health care resources,” said AMA Immediate Past President Jack Resneck, MD.

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.