It does help to be a journalist at a major magazine. Plebeians such as myself would be very lucky to get such a response.

100%. There's an implicit threat as a journalist -- I'll write this story up if I don't get my way.

True, but I have seen several projects recently that are focused on using Agents for Prior Auth Denial and though some are obviously biased e.g.: forus.com and simply trying to get more customers others are really just focused on resolving the denial.