CNN story about Aetna denying laser ablation treatment

I was trying to learn more about this case where Aetna is not allowing one of their customers to do laser ablation. Cara Pressman, the subject of the story, is trying to get her insurance company to let her do laser ablation surgery. I'm about to have that done. The surgery is not being paid for by my insurance (United Healthcare). It is being paid for as part of a medical study sponsored by Medtronic, the company that makes the Visualase System which is used to perform the laser ablation. The study is called "Stereotactic Laser Ablation for Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (SLATE)". I have added a link below and would be happy to try to answer questions. I'm doing the surgery in the next three months. (FYI, I am just a patient and don't work for Visualase and am just discussing this, not advertising) I hope that helps. I'm trying to understand the situation with insurance companies. What is their standard for them being willing to pay for a type of medical care? With the Visualase device, it says that it is "cleared by the U.S. FDA to be used in neurosurgery" but is considered an "investigational device" for people with drug resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). The FDA has not approved it for marketing as a treatment for epilepsy (again, that's why I'm trying to make it clear that I'm just a patient and not trying to sell this). Does the surgery have to be 'approved for marketing' before an insurance company will cover it? Is that usually the case? I'm disappointed with the CNN story because it did not explain that the clinical trial would only include people 18-70 years old. Is she in a bad spot because they won't let her in the study because she is 15 years old and insurance companies don't pay for treatments that are not 'approved for marketing'? Or do insurance companies often cover treatments that aren't yet 'approved for marketing' and Aetna (and others) are just being cheap in this case? PS Cara, if you're reading this I hope that things work out. http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/11/health/aetna-surgery-denied-for-girl/index.html http://www.medtronic.com/us-en/healthcare-professionals/products/neurological/laser-ablation/slate.html