Tell House members TODAY:
Please SUPPORT SB 421 to maintain
doctor-patient autonomy and curb bureaucratic
rationing of life-saving prescription medicines.

In a clinical setting, medicine is traditionally practiced by a
doctor diagnosing a patient’s illness and then working directly
with a patient to decide a course of therapy, including prescribing
the proper medicine to treat the illness.
Step therapy, a form of rationing also known as “Fail First,” is an
approach—employed by some insurance companies—to paying
for prescription drugs, which seeks to curb some initial costs by
paying for the least expensive drug, then, if that drug fails to help
the patient, the next least expensive drug is given to the patient,
and so on, until the patient is given the treatment that works.
Even if a doctor has prescribed a more effective treatment, step
therapy protocols mandate that only the cheaper drug, rather than
the most effective therapy, will be covered when a prescription is
filled. This rationing often results in patients not receiving timely
or effective treatments, and can lead to patients receiving entirely
different formulas within the same drug class.

While the least expensive drug may be effective for some patients,
the process of getting to the correct drug prescribed by a physician
may ultimately be more costly to the patient in wasted time and therapy,
which may not be effective in treating their illness. Step therapy can
be especially harmful to patients in sensitive populations, such as those
with Epilepsy and mental illness.
The main goal of step therapy is to contain cost; not patient safety.
Insurance companies are increasing their use of this method of denying
care to patients, through these extreme cost control measures.
SB 421 seeks to maintain the doctor-patient relationship by allowing
physicians to bypass bureaucratic decisions by insurance companies,
by providing a clear process to grant an override of step therapy programs,
when such programs are shown to be ineffective in the treatment of an
insured patient’s disease or medical condition.
Please support patient access to medical care and life-saving medications,
and the doctor-patient relationship over bureaucratic rationing, and:
Vote FOR SB 421

Link :   house.louisiana.gov/H_Reps/H_Reps_ByName.asp

Attachment:   Please SUPPORT SB 421.pdf