Lately, the medical profession has begun to accept the need for medications related to prescription drug addiction to help provide a glimmer of hope for people with opioid use disorder (OUD). However, a recent study by clinical scientists at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in Portland found that insurance rules are restricting the use of the prescription drug buprenorphine among Medicare beneficiaries.
Buprenorphine is considered an effective and safe drug to treat addiction to heroin and other types of opioids, helping to reduce deaths caused by it. According to study co-author Dr. Todd Korthuis, chief of addiction medicine at OHSU, patients given buprenorphine are observed to return to their pre-addiction healthy state.
Ironic move by Medicare insurance companies
In an OHSU news release, Dr. Korthuis said that ironically, while the insurance companies that offer Medicare policies make it fairly difficult for doctors to prescribe buprenorphine, they make it relatively easy for them to prescribe opioid pain relievers, which led to the current opioid epidemic. .
For the purposes of this study, the clinical scientists conducted an analysis of data related to the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan and noted that due to the increasing use of certain prior authorization conditions, the prescription Buprenorphine use was increasingly restricted among insurance beneficiaries who enrolled in Medicare plans between 2007 and 2018. Insurers commonly use prior authorization conditions to restrict or manage access to certain drugs to keep costs down.
The study findings revealed that about 90 percent of insurance plans offered unrestricted buprenorphine in 2007. However, the percentage dropped to nearly 35 percent in 2018. On the other hand, during the aforementioned period, the The percentage of plans that cover prescription opioids like OxyContin without any limitations increased from 93 percent to 100 percent.
The researchers stated that factors influencing buprenorphine restrictions may reflect incorrectly perceived drug-associated risks, such as financial considerations or social norms associated with addiction. The findings of this study were recently published in a research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Benefits of Prescribing Buprenorphine
Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), buprenorphine is one of three FDA-approved drugs to treat OUD and helps relieve withdrawal symptoms and associated pain and discomfort. Daniel Hartung, an associate professor at the Oregon State University College of Pharmacy, said that since Medicare does not and never did cover methadone, the other anti-opioid drug prescribed for the treatment of patients battling OUD, it is important that provide access to buprenorphine.
According to the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), prescription drugs such as buprenorphine are an effective means of treating opioid addiction. Unfortunately, Dr. Korthuis said, many people still believe that treating addiction with medication isn’t really the path to recovery. But scientific evidence supports the fact that drugs like buprenorphine have a higher recovery success rate than simply resorting to abstinence-only approaches.
Seeking help for addiction to prescription drugs
Millions of people have lost their lives to the opioid crisis currently plaguing the United States, while millions more are facing the same situation. There is no question that a mammoth effort would be required to deal with the prescription drug crisis.