Medicaid change harmful

Medicaid has instituted a new policy where they will not refill any medication unless the provider is Medicaid-certified. On the surface, this appears to be a harmless policy. In reality, many people, including those with mental illness, will not be able to refill their prescriptions.

My son tried to refill a costly medication. Medicaid’s part of this $1,000 per month prescription was $200. Although they had refilled a medication the day before, they stated they could no longer refill medications from providers who were not Medicaid-certified.

My son has a family helping him. We are working on this problem. A lot of mentally ill people have no one to turn to and will quit taking their medications. This will translate to more people in emergency rooms, Eastern State Hospital and jail.

We now have a large population of mentally ill people unable to obtain needed psychiatric medications. While this policy may save a few dollars on the cost of prescriptions, it will incur huge expenses in hospitalizations. Medicaid needs to remove this policy ASAP.

Vicki Warren

Spokane