Insurance officials propose ways to fight opioid addiction
Representatives of major Ohio health insurers joined Attorney General Mike DeWine on Tuesday to outline recommendations and roles they can play to help reduce the use of pain pills, heroin, fentanyl and other opioids.
The crisis has called on private insurers to cover treatment for those who have fallen prey to drug addiction, with opioid-related claims for medical care increasing 770 percent since 2007.
The Insurer Task Force on Opioid Addiction, formed last August by DeWine, met for months to share ways to better deal with prevention, intervention and treatment of addiction.
“These recommendations are sound and should make a big difference,” DeWine said. “There are some signs of progress ... but certainly the fight is far from over.”
The latest provisional figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show Ohio is afflicted with one of the worst opioid addiction problems in the country.
A total of 5,197 died from drug overdoses in Ohio in the 12 months ending in October 2017, the third-highest number in the U.S. behind Pennsylvania and Florida. The state’s 26.1 percent increase in deaths over the year before was more than double the 12 percent national increase.
“This is perhaps one of the most significant public health crises of our time,” said Bruce Hill, president and chief executive officer of Buckeye Health Plan, the state’s second largest Medicaid health plan.
Dr. Mario San Bartolome, medical director of substance abuse disorders for Molina Healthcare, said insurers continue to adopt best practices to help Ohio families deal with a “chronic disease.”
“It actually costs more to do nothing ... to ignore the problem,” he said.
The group of insurers, which also included Aetna, Anthem, CareSource, Medical Mutual, Paramount, United Healthcare and the Ohio Association of Health Plans, developed 15 recommendations for battling opioids.
They range from a “first fill” plan, to educate first-time pain pill patients about the dangers of abuse, to a program to provide integrated care for pregnant female addicts to help deliver healthy babies.
The task force also called on insurers to eliminate prior authorization for addicts to obtain medicationassisted treatment and increase reimbursement rates to cover the costs of treating drug addiction.
Lori Criss, chief executive offiicer of the Ohio Council of Behavioral Health and Family Services Providers, praised a recommendation calling for enforcement of a federal law that prohibits insurers from imposing benefit limits on behavioral health services.
“Perhaps the most important thing that insurance companies can do to support providers in ending the opiate crisis is to pay claims in-full and quickly,” she said.