State regulations are apparently keeping needed drugs out of the hands of AIDS patients in Texas, California, Florida and New York, which have the nation's largest numbers of such patients, according to a federally-funded report.
Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco's AIDS Research Institute report that, on average, only about half of the patients who qualify for Medicaid's HIV/AIDS drug treatment program in those four states actually get medication.
In Texas, fewer than 40 percent of qualified Medicaid recipients got AIDS drugs. About half of Medicaid recipients in California and Florida received these drugs, and more than half of New York's qualified recipients got these prescriptions, the Associated Press reports.
The numbers were better for the federally-funded, state-administered AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), designed for low-income people with little or no health insurance. Because the program is specifically tailored to AIDS treatment, more people received drugs in those four states.
About half of Texas ADAP patients received needed drugs, an estimated two-thirds of California and Florida patients received treatment, and about 75 percent of New York ADAP participants received medications, AP reports.
The report -- funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- finds that state restrictions are the biggest obstacles to providing treatment to all those who qualify.
Texas and Florida, for example, restrict Medicaid patients to three prescriptions a month. And Texas had a number of requirements for ADAP patients, including a $5 per prescription charge, one central prescription-processing office, and few pharmacies that would provide medications to ADAP patients, the report states.
"Those are decisions made at the state level. That's how Congress established the program," Health Resources and Services Administration spokesman Tom Flavin told the AP.
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