Step Therapy Drug Bill Calling For Cheap Drug Use Before Expensive Ones Questioned

A drug bill is being questioned by mental health advocates due to its possible negative effects on mental health patients. It was passed by Kansas lawmakers and calls on doctors to try cheaper drugs before expensive ones for Medicaid recipients.

The bill advocates a step therapy method, but it does not show anything new happening within private and public health insurance plans. The method can help to offer health care for poor residents.

However, Rick Cagan, executive director of the Kansas affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, explains that each patient has a different reaction in terms of tolerance and response while reacting to psychiatric drugs.

"Individuals and their prescribers need to have the greatest degree of flexibility to ensure a good match for patients," he 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."

Still, supporters of the bill, which is expected to be signed on Monday, believe that safeguards are in place in order to protect patients with mental health problems, while advocates are just seeking unfair exemption from a practice that insured patients need to be faced with.

"They just want to be left totally outside so that they don't have to do anything like the rest of the world has to do," said Republican Sen. Jim Denning, of Overland Park. "If a new patient comes into the system, they will be given the right drug or combination of drugs to keep them as healthy and as well as we can."

Still, many think that the bill will lead to limitations mainly due to the costs. Moreover, there are some concerns over the ability of mental health patients to become aware of the administrative hurdles that are needed to be overcome if they are turned away from their doctors because of the prices of drugs.

"For someone who doesn't own their own transportation, who may or may not have strong cognitive abilities ... our biggest fear is that they will walk out of the pharmacy and they don't come back for the adjustments to be made," said Amy Campbell, a lobbyist for the Kansas Mental Health Coalition.

While currently, Medicaid costs Kansas $3 billion per year, step therapy could save the state up to $11 million per year. Those who support the Bill believe that the process is used nationwide and issues of mental health will be considered.