Big changes in Rhode Island's Medicaid formulary are raising big concerns among mental health advocates. The General Assembly authorized the state Department of Human Services to create a preferred drug list that would limit the drugs covered by Medicaid and switch patients to generics whenever possible. The DHS sought public feedback in a hearing last week. Advocates for the mentally ill pleaded to exclude mental-illness medications from the new regulations. A preferred drug list could have a "devastating" effect because it would "force physicians to choose medications that they otherwise would not prescribe," Chaz Gross, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-Rhode Island, said at the hearing. Though anti-psychotics are specifically excluded under the new law, the advocates also are seeking to exempt antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, and anti-convulsants.
For more background on the RI mental health battle:
- see this article from the Providence Journal.