JACKSON - The confusion over Medicaid coverage has spilled over to pharmacists across the state, who are scrambling for ways to provide prescriptions for patients dropped from the health care program.
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Friday to delay the effective date of a Medicaid change that would eliminate 50,884 recipients from the program. Medicaid officials have said it could take more than a week to update computers to reinstate the beneficiaries.
Francis Rullan, spokesman for Medicaid, said employees were working Monday to reprogram the system.
In the meantime, several pharmacists say some Medicaid customers who tried to get prescriptions filled on Monday and over the weekend were rejected.
Mitzi Olson, a pharmacist at Chaney's Pharmacy in Oxford, said at least seven of her customers couldn't fill prescriptions.
"We're just giving them two or three doses to get them through until it can be resolved," Olson said.
Gov. Haley Barbour said eliminating the Poverty Level Aged and Disabled category from Medicaid would save the state millions of dollars. The category included almost 68,000 patients.
Medicaid is paid by state and federal dollars. Barbour said most of the PLADs would be eligible for Medicare, a program wholly funded by the federal government.
About 17,000 PLADs - those who either don't immediately qualify for Medicare or who need anti-psychotic drugs or certain other life-sustaining prescriptions - will continue to receive Medicaid under a federal waiver. However, Olson said some of the patients included in the waiver were being denied Medicaid on Monday.
Medicaid executive director Dr. Warren Jones said officials were investigating those rejections.
"They should not have been affected," Jones said Monday.
Medicare provides a $600 prescription drug card, which health care advocates say is far less than the cost of the average beneficiary's yearly prescriptions.
On the Gulf Coast, pharmacist Mack Hobbes said he's hampered by the extra work. Hobbes, who works at Save Rex Pharmacy in Moss Point, said when a customer's Medicaid card is rejected, he tries to calls Medicare to see if the person qualifies for the federal program.
Hobbes said he gets about 10 to 15 Medicaid customers each day. He said Medicaid had rejected at least four on Monday morning.
"It's a mess. It's sad, too. The majority of them are in bad shape," Hobbes said. "One of them got a prescription that's so expensive, it wiped out her entire Medicare card today."
Hobbes directed the woman back to her doctor to apply for one of the drug programs offered by pharmaceutical companies.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
