The state Department of Health is taking steps to ensure convicted sex offenders aren't offered Medicaid-funded Viagra, or any other impotence treatment drug.
Health department spokesman Steve McDonald said Tuesday the state received word from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that states "should restrict the coverage of such drugs in the case of individuals convicted of a sex offense."
The federal letter, dated Monday, was sent to state health departments after it was discovered that more than 400 convicted sex offenders in New York and Florida were reimbursed for Viagra.
It said prescribing such medication to sex offenders could "constitute fraud, abuse or inappropriate use" of the Medicaid system.
"This was a victory for common sense," said Dr. David Sundwall, health department executive director, noting that the state would have taken action to prevent convicted sex offenders from receiving sexual dysfunction medications with or without the federal letter.
Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for the poor, provides coverage for five different erectile dysfunction medications.
"We've already begun efforts to find out if there are any sex offenders on Medicaid in Utah with a current prescription," McDonald said. "If there are, they won't be able to get it paid for through Medicaid any longer."
Utah's Medicaid applications currently don't ask for criminal history, and doctors prescribing medication don't screen for previous offenses.
Officials here track 8,000 people on the sex offender registry. In 2004, among the 2,115 total inmates released from prison, 312 of those were classified as sex offenders. The state is determining if any of them are covered by Medicaid.
McDonald also said the state is working on a plan to prevent convicted sex offenders from receiving erectile dysfunction drugs through Medicaid. Details were being worked out Tuesday, but McDonald said the plan might include working with physicians and pharmacists.
The New York comptroller's office said audits from 2000 through March found that 198 rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in the state received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions.
Their crimes included offenses against children as young as 2, Comptroller Alan Hevesi said. The report sent the Bush administration scrambling to find a way to close the loophole.
"The bottom line is giving convicted sex offenders government-funded Viagra is like giving convicted murderers an assault rifle when they get out of jail," said Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat.
Auditors did not review situations in other states, but Hevesi's spokesman, David Neustadt, said policies on Viagra under the health care program for the poor and elderly are apparently the same nationwide.
Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist noted that Medicaid has paid $93,000 to provide Viagra to 218 sex offenders in that state over the past four years.
Gary Karr, spokesman for the federal Health and Human Services Department, said confusion over a 1998 federal directive apparently resulted in Medicaid-paid Viagra for sex offenders. In a letter Sunday to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, Hevesi requested administrative action or an amendment to the Medicaid law. "It's great that the federal government has responded immediately," he said.
Laura Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan's Law, an advocacy group named for a New Jersey girl raped and killed in 1994 by a convicted sex offender, praised the government's move as "the most proactive measure they can take to ensure that individual states can legislate what their values are."
The New York audit covered only Viagra. State auditors are reviewing whether other prescription drugs for sexual dysfunction are being reimbursed by Medicaid for convicted sex offenders in the state, officials said.
E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com