Roadblocks to patient access to medications

Louisiana residents who rely on Medicaid: Your new Bayou Health Managed Care plan may not cover your medicines.

That’s because instead of upholding legislatively-ap­proved protections for the doctor-patient relationship, cost-savings are supreme! The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals have allowed these new plans to create additional roadblocks to patient access to medications.

The aim of this new plan should be to increase patient access to prescribed medicines, because medicines keep patients independent and out of institutions. That is what decreases health care costs!

– B. K. Lewis

This article was originally published in the October 22, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper