Carlucci Joins Mental Health Advocates in Call to Restore “Prescriber Prevails”

State Senator David Carlucci met with mental health advocates, doctors, and patients on February 21, joining them in a call to restore Medicaid’s “Prescriber Prevails” program for state drug plans and especially for atypical antipsychotics.

The Prescriber Prevails program gives doctors the final authority on which medications will best assist their patients. This changed in October 2011, when the final authority on prescription plans shifted from physicians to managed healthcare plans.

Carlucci called the changes “a prescription for failure” and explained patients suffer when insurance companies refuse to provide medication. Critics have argued the repeal could create serious problems when patients lose access to fast, careful, and detailed consultations on medications, which become far more difficult when patients must work with insurance entities.

Prescriber Prevails was restored for atypical antipsychotics in 2012, but is once again at risk in the upcoming budget proposal, which threatens to cut the program to save $9.38 million. Furthermore, Governor Andrew Cuomo has also proposed to repeal prescriber prevails for all Medicaid prescription drug plans.

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