Bid To Change California Mental Illness Drug Policy

Californian policies for treating the mentally ill are not onlyinhumane, but waste millions of taxpayers' dollars, says Assemblyman Gary Millar, who last week introduced new data to support his bill, AB 659, which would allow physicians to prescribe new atypical antipsychotic drugs as first-line therapy.

Currently, state policy requires Medi-Cal schizophrenia patients to fail at least twice on older drugs before the newer medications can be prescribed. This prior authorization process is unlike that of any other class of prescription drug on the Medi-Cal formulary and, says Mr Miller, puts California behind nearly all other US states. 47 have changed their formularies to make Eli Lilly's Zyprexa (olanzapine), Janssen-Cilag's Risperdal (risperidone) and Sandoz' Clozaril (clozapine) available as first-line treatments for schizophrenia, he says. "Only California, Hawaii and Georgia remain behind the times, and the latter two are considering changes to their policies as we speak."

Kentucky, which has the USA's most restrictive formulary, made the new drugs available without prior authorization last year. California has the second most restrictive formulary, making just 39% of Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs available for Medi-Cal recipients. In comparison, Washington State, the fourth most restrictive, makes 68% of prescription drugs available, the Mental Health Association in California points out.