Mental health advocates question Kansas 'step therapy' bill

Mental health advocates are raising concerns about a bill passed by Kansas lawmakers that would require doctors to try cheaper drugs before more expensive ones for Medicaid recipients, but the bill's backers say the concerns are overblown.

The process, called step therapy, is common in many private and public health insurance plans. It was key to resolving budget issues because it would reduce the state's cost of providing health care for poor residents by nearly $11 million a year. Gov. Sam Brownback is expected to sign the bill Monday.

Mental health advocates asked that drugs used to treat mental illnesses be specifically exempted on the grounds that the process of trial and error with them would have more severe consequences, including a greater risk of hospitalization and suicide, than with drugs that treat other conditions.

People have different responses and tolerance levels with psychiatric drugs, said Rick Cagan, executive director of the Kansas affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

"Individuals and their prescribers need to have the greatest degree of flexibility to ensure a good match for patients," Cagan said. "We don't know as much about how the brain responds to this whole kind of cadre of medications ... as we do with cardiac and other kinds of medications."

But lawmakers who supported the bill say adequate safeguards are in place and mental health advocates want an unfair exemption from a common practice that many insured patients face.

One issue is how much protection is offered by an oversight group set up to provide input from mental health clinical professionals in the creation of mental health drug regulations.

Sorry, not buying this. If cost-saving protocols are in place for drugs that treat infections, cancer, diabetes, liver disease, etc., etc., then I think it's reasonable that the same politically-driven protocols are reasonable for "mental health."

2 posted on 05/17/2016 4:16:10 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("We like us the way we are. That makes us real, true friends." ~ The Undead Thread)

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