Idaho ranks high in keeping Medicaid patients off disability

BY COLLEEN LAMAY - clamay@idahostatesman.com

Published: 10/28/08


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Idaho often scrapes the bottom of the barrel in national rankings of states on health-related matters.

This time is different.

Idaho ranks in the top five states nationwide for providing Medicaid patients with new drugs they need to get off and stay off the disability rolls.

An increasing number of Americans are being classified as disabled, according to the report, by Frank Lichtenberg of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York.

Between 1995 and 2004, the number of Americans receiving benefits under two federal disability programs - Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, and Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, - rose 30 percent, says the report, to be released Tuesday.

The states in which pharmaceutical innovations were adopted the quickest had the smallest increases in disability rates, according to the study.

In addition to Idaho, those states were California, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maryland.

The lowest-ranking five states added people to the disability rolls at a rate 75 percent greater than in the top five states.

The states at the bottom of the list were Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana and West Virginia.

The study uses Medicaid prescription data. Medicaid, public health insurance for the poor and disabled, accounts for as many as one in seven prescrptions written in theU.S., according to the report.

Colleen LaMay: 377-6448

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