It’s one of the most crucial questions people have when deciding which health plan to choose: If my doctor orders a test or treatment, will my insurer refuse to pay for it?

After all, an insurance company that routinely rejects recommended care could damage both your health and your finances.

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The lack of transparency is especially galling because state and federal regulators have the power to fix it, but haven’t.

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In 2010, federal regulators were granted expansive authority through the Affordable Care Act to require that insurers provide information on their denials. This data could have meant a sea change in transparency for consumers. But more than a decade later, the federal government has collected only a fraction of what it’s entitled to. And what information it has released, experts say, is so crude, inconsistent and confusing that it’s essentially meaningless.

The national group for state insurance commissioners gathers a more detailed, reliable trove of information. Yet, even though commissioners’ primary duty is to protect consumers, they withhold nearly all of these details from the public. ProPublica requested the data from every state’s insurance department, but none provided it.

Two states collect their own information on denials and make it public, but their data covers only a tiny subset of health plans serving a small number of people.

Read more on ProPublica.