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Originally posted by bryanthompson
Supe, surely there's already a piece of medicaid in place to oversee some part of this process. My grandpa can't just go get any medications he feels like and expect medacaid to pay for it. I don't buy the idea that this one bit of checking would cause such a massive workload on the overburdened gubmint [sic] employees that we'd need to throw more money at it. Someone's already doing the job somewhere, just add this line to their job discription, and boom, done. endo story.
Of course... it is a little more complicated than that... As soon as we start digging into the medical files of sex offenders, we'd have such stand-up organizations as nambla filing lawsuits. I think the burden needs to be upon doctors to know their patients, and not even be able to perscribe the meds. Doctors already have the medical info, they know who the limp-dicked offenders are if they are treating one.
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You're gonna have to forgive me for this (or not), but this is naive. I'll grant that there may be administrative mechanisms in place, computer systems for example, or Medicaid claim denial systems that could simply be tweeked to include this new regulation....so it may be that the ongoing administrative burden would be minimized. But make no mistake about it, this is not just something where some bureaucrat just reaches to a switch marked "No Viagra for Sex Offenders," flips the switch and goes back to sleep. for example, you mention that maybe the doctors should be responsible. I doubt if it can work that way, and even if it were possible, the doctors would refuse. Their job is to practice medicine, not law enforcement. This is a Medicaid question, not a health care question.
Also, compiling lists of offenders and keeping it current is going to cause burden. If there were already a list of sex offenders out there, updated daily by some other staff, then fine. But I'll be there is not. Individual states do keep lists. So, someone could place calls to those states and discuss what form their list takes, how often is it updated, is this a list of the "sex offenders" defined in the new Medicaid regulation (if not, then this complexifies the administrative burden GREATLY), how can the list be shared, what releases/permissions will be required, etc.
If you don't have any idea how gubmint is run, and you hate gubmint, then the administrative challenges you are suggesting are going to seem like "just another bunch of gubmint bull****." But if you're more of a realist and you do understand what it takes to actually get stuff done, like on a national level (thousands of names on that list), particularly where it comes to peoples rights and the denial thereof, then you will understand that this idea is indeed a logical, reasonable request for government services, but that it's not free. Freedom is not free, and neither is the stuff we ask the government to accomplish.