Letter from the Editor #722: Enrollment in ACA May Mean More Patients Needing Diabetes Prescriptions

This Monday ends the official enrollment period for The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, and both the Obama White House and the Congressional Budget office are reporting that over 6 million people have enrolled in the state and federal exchange programs. This is actually more enrollees than were predicted in spite of the problems when ACA first began. As with all new programs, there have been some glitches but it appears that, for many people, things are working fine.

It is really interesting to speak to people who are now coming into the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions and listen to their stories about going for an appointment for diabetes or hypertension for the first time in 5-10 years. A good example of this occurred last week when a 46 year old patient came in for a new prescription for metformin 500mg. When I went to advise him on the drug I discovered that he had not been to a prescriber in three years and so had been unable to get a prescription for a medication that he could get at no charge, going without it for the past 15 months.

On the flip side these extra 6 million patients will mean that it will be harder to find a prescriber who will have time to treat them, and maybe this will mean that prescribers will look more to pharmacists to modify or adjust medication. This idea is moving forward in California where pharmacists will be able to increase, modify, or change medications for diabetes patients and get compensated for it.

This increase in new patients will invariably mean that we will see more patients with a risk for diabetes and this week’s Tool for Your Practice gives you the latest ADA handout for evaluating the risk of diabetes. Why not print these out and have each of your new patients fill it out the first time thy are in the office?

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Dave Joffe, Editor-in-chief