A Senate-passed bill to reduce Colorado’s Medicaid prescription drug costs by at least $2 million a year appears to be a sensible and humane measure.
Senate Bill 22, now in the House, would create a preferred drug list for Medicaid patients like those used by Oregon and some other states, private health care plans and federal agencies.
A companion measure, Senate Bill 102, would allow Colorado to join buying pools with other states to get drugs for Medicaid recipients at discount prices.
Under SB 22, a a 15-member pharmacy and therapeutics committee, including physicians, pharmacists, other health professionals and consumers, would make recommendations to a state Medical Services Board, which will produce the preferred list by 2006.
The bill would not limit choice of medications for AIDS or HIV patients and would provide some choice in drugs for mental illness. New drugs could be added to the list in the future.
Objections from the Mental Health Association of Colorado and other advocacy groups got the exemptions added to the bill. But Chris Habgood, the association’s public policy director, still worries that a state list “limits access to certain types of drugs,” the authorization process for additions to the list is too “cumbersome,” and the exemptions don’t cover all mental illnesses.
But Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, says the pharmacy and therapeutics committee would have the power to exempt “any class of drugs they think is necessary.” And doctors would retain the ability to prescribe medically necessary drugs.
“Federal Medicaid law says [patients] must be given a 72-hour supply immediately and get an answer [under a prior-authorization procedure] within 24 hours,” Johnson said. He discounted the “notion that doctors are being forced to change people’s medications” as false. He also said there are no hidden pitfalls that would deny Medicaid patients their medications.
With Colorado paying more than $265 million yearly for Medicaid prescriptions, the legislature’s approach to cutting costs appears to be a good one.
