I had a labral tear in my right hip, and I needed an MRI with contrast to diagnose it. Aetna wouldn't cover the MRI until I'd done 6 weeks of physical therapy. I ended up paying out of pocket for the physical therapy because it was an $80/session co-pay vs their self-pay rate of $70/session. Then once I'd finished therapy there was about 6 weeks of waiting until I could get in for the MRI, because Aetna wouldn't let me get an MRI at the local hospital, I had to go to an outpatient imaging center and they were booked up. And when I got the results - what do you know, near complete detachment! Something that physical therapy would never help with. After that, I consulted with a surgeon (6 week wait), and his waitlist for surgery was 4 months. (Granted, I went to one of the top surgeons in my area - I was OK with waiting for that.) So it ended up being 10 months from noticing the hip pain in May 2023 to finally getting the surgery in March 2024, and a lot of that delay was because Aetna was being obstructive.

I suspect they want people to get fed up with the roadblocks and just give up on pursuing medical care.