Officials say sex offenders here don’t get Viagra via Medicaid

OLYMPIA – Washington state officials said there’s no evidence sex offenders have received Viagra through Medicaid, unlike cases in several states, including Florida, New York and Ohio.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that Medicaid spends about $38 million a year on erectile dysfunction drugs, all but $2 million for Viagra.

Jim Stevenson, spokesman for Washington state’s Medicaid program, said there is a strict preauthorization requirement for drugs like Viagra. Erectile dysfunction is not considered a medically necessary condition by the state and officials will only authorize Viagra for pulmonary hypertension, a condition Stevenson says is present in infants and the elderly.

“We’re not paying for Viagra for erectile dysfunction,” he said.

The state attorney general’s office also said it wasn’t aware of any cases in which Viagra was prescribed to sex offenders under Medicaid.

Medicaid is a state and federal program that provides health care for the poor.

In a letter to the states earlier this week, CMS Director Dennis Smith said states should review their procedures and work with physicians and pharmacists to prevent Medicaid payment for sex offenders’ impotence drugs.

Providing the drugs to sex offenders could “constitute fraud, abuse or inappropriate use of Medicaid funds,” he wrote.

The letter was sent after officials learned more than 400 convicted sex offenders in New York and Florida were reimbursed for the drugs.

The New York comptroller’s office said audits from 2000 through March of this year found 198 sex offenders there received Medicaid reimbursements for Viagra.

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist said Monday that Medicaid in that state had paid $93,000 to provide Viagra to 218 sex offenders.

Officials in Ohio and Missouri also acknowledged their Medicaid programs paid for the drug for sex offenders.

In response, Utah Health Director David Sundwall has ordered a cross check of the state’s sex offender registry against Medicaid recipients to see if any such offenders were being reimbursed in that state.

Stevenson said no similar check was being planned in Washington because the threshold to obtain the drug under Medicaid is so high that it’s rare for anyone to be reimbursed for the drug, regardless of whether they are a sex offender.