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This issue is becoming a huge problem. Insurance companies – especially the Obama Care Health Exchanges – are limiting your choice of doctor and hospital. I do not know how they have the right to do that. It doesn’t seem fair or even useful. I am working with the National Brain Tumor Society to try to get a new law passed that would include all NCI designated cancer centers as “in network” for all insurance plans. That would be a good start. Eventually, we should do away with “in network” panels. Health care is too important to allow a bureaucrat to make the decisions for you on which hospitals or doctors to use. My solution would be to do away with network panels all together. Instead, the insurance company can publish a fee schedule that they would pay to any doctor treating the members. They publish a list of doctors who would accept that fee schedule (plus copayments and deductible) as payment in full. This way you can select any doctor you want and the insurance will pay the fee schedule amount. If the doctor you select is on the list, you just pay the copayment and deductible. IF the doctor you select isn’t on the list, you also pay the difference between the regular fee and the fee schedule amount.