From 2004 to 2007, Medicaid paid almost $198 million for over 100 unapproved prescription drugs. (Source)
Although the drugs have been on the market for decades, they haven’t been assessed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for safety or effectiveness. About two percent of drugs sold in the United States have not been approved by the FDA. The agency developed tighter restrictions on drugs in the 1960s.
Critics say the FDA must compile a complete list of unapproved drugs, so that Medicaid and private insurers don’t end up paying for them. Herb Kuhn of Medicaid said, “I think this is something we ought to look at very hard, and we ought to fix it…It raises a whole set of questions, not only in terms of safety, but in the efficiency of the program — to make sure we are getting the right set of services for beneficiaries.”
In other Medicaid news, the AP reports that Idaho’s Medicaid eligibility system contains thousands of errors, because there’s no coordination between the automated computer system used to determine eligibility and the one used to process payments. (Source)
An excerpt:
According to the audit, “The last completed reconciliation was for a 13-month period and contained 23,240 errors.” More than 1,500 errors were corrected within five weeks, but more than 21,600 remained. “Based on these numbers, we estimate 400 errors and only 300 corrections occur each week, resulting in approximately 100 new errors that will not be corrected.”
A spokesperson from Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare said the audit was based on old information.
