Assembly Bill 659
California Psychiatric Association
Supports Assembly Bill 659 (MiIler)
The Current Situation:
Schizophrenia is a severely disabling biological brain disease. Patients
suffer hallucinations and delusions, often hearing voices. The medications
for this disease have, until the last few years, had such severe side effects
that patients were more willing to live with their disease than take their
medications. The most disabling side effect is '"tardive dyskinesia,"
where patients tremble as if they suffered a severe case of Parkinson's
disease. These older medications, available for more than 40 years, also
give only partial relief. They help rid of hallucinations, but the patient
remains withdrawn and uncommunicative.
Unfortunately, only older medications are available on the Medi-Cal formulary
Many times, psychiatrists must first document two failures of the old medications,
trying each of those medications for up to 6 months before the new one will
be approved by Medi-Cal. This is penny wise and dollar foolish, looking
only at the purchase price of the medications. It does not take into account
its tragic human impacts and other economic costs.
What AB 659 Does and Why It Is Important:
AB 659 (Miller) would make the new, breakthrough antipsychotic medications
more readily available for the treatment of psychoses, especially for patients
with schizophrenia. Several new breakthrough medications have been developed
in the last few years which not only have few or no side effects for many
patients, but also can bring patients from barely functioning to being able
to work part time.
The following factors show that the taxpayer
let alone the patient, is much
better off if the new
medications are available, because patients:
Require fewer hospitalizations (two
hospital days per year exceed the cost difference between the new and old medications);
Get better results and suffer fewer side effects,
so are more likely to take their medications
(as one patient said, his new medication "does not bother me the way
the other one did");
Avoid the brain
damage (sometimes permanent) that occurs when medications
do not
accomplish the desired results;
Can avoid or move off disability in
whole or in part because they are able to work, becoming
taxpayers instead of tax consumers;
Do not become homeless (an estimated
1/3 of homeless people have schizophrenia).
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