Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Medicaid puts kids' drug back on its list

The asthma medicine apparently was dropped from a list of preferred drugs by mistake.

By LISA GREENE
Published July 20, 2005

Medicaid's youngest patients no longer will face restrictions on getting medicine to ward off asthma attacks, state officials said Tuesday.

The medicine, Pulmicort Respules, apparently was taken off Medicaid's list of preferred drugs by mistake. The drug is especially important for children with asthma because there is no good substitute for children too young to use an inhaler.

Medicaid officials still are trying to work out a discounted price for the drug with its manufacturer, AstraZeneca, said Jonathan Burns, spokesman for the Agency for Health Care Administration.

But after doctors complained publicly about the problem, AHCA Secretary Alan Levine decided the drug should be covered immediately.

"The agency's focus remains ensuring that Medicaid patients get the medications they need," Burns said. "That's why as soon as the Pulmicort issue came to light, Secretary Levine acted to make the medication available."

Doctors greeted the news with relief.

"Kids are going to get their asthma medicine," said Dr. Barbara Chamberlain, a Palm Beach County pediatrician. "They recognized they had done something wrong and they're going to fix it."

Pulmicort got dropped from the list because AstraZeneca failed to include the drug on a bid list it submitted to the state, Burns said. AstraZeneca officials couldn't confirm how the drug got dropped, but had said they were working with AHCA to fix the problem.

Under Medicaid rules, doctors must first try prescribing drugs on the preferred list, which the state buys at discounted prices, before prescribing other medicines. Doctors can file paperwork asking the state to cover the drug if the patient has tried the preferred drugs without success, or if there's some reason the patient shouldn't take the preferred drug.

Before the new list went into effect last week, psychiatric drugs were getting the most attention, because they have been exempt from the list before. But Pulmicort soon became a particular problem. Doctors said filing the paperwork for so many children was overwhelming their office staffs, and that AHCA wasn't authorizing prescriptions quickly enough. They worried that some children might not get their medicine and have asthma attacks.

Pulmicort Respules are vials of liquid medicine. The liquid is put into a nebulizer, which delivers the medicine as a mist through a mask.

Medicaid now will cover Pulmicort for children 5 and under, Burns said. Some children with disabilities, such as those with cystic fibrosis, also use Pulmicort Respules. They will still have to file authorization forms.

[Last modified July 20, 2005, 00:56:12]