More Drug War Stupidity in Kentucky
This stupidity will not stop one single person from getting prescription drugs illegally. It will, however, bankrupt thousands of Kentuckians while enriching already obscenely wealthy insurance companies and the drug-testing companies they own.
Not to mention hacking another major limb off our Constitutional rights.
John Cheves at the Herald:
To curb prescription drug abuse, Kentucky started in July requiring people with long-term prescriptions for controlled substances to submit to urine testing. The tests determine if patients take their drugs, rather than sell them, and if other, unprescribed drugs are in their systems.
In Lexington, retired nurse Cynthia Burton grudgingly followed the rules Aug. 14 by urinating into a plastic cup so she could get a refill of her insomnia medicine. Her husband did the same for his anxiety medicine.
Last week, Burton's insurance company, Bluegrass Family Health, sent her a letter. The urine tests at LabCorp cost $533 each, and because they were not medically necessary, the insurer said, it won't pay for her husband's test. She's still waiting to hear if it will pay for hers, but she's not optimistic given that it was the same test for the same reason under the same plan.Call your state legislators and tell them to fix this abomination.
"More than $1,000 is pretty damn big to us. We're both retired, so it's a lot of money," said Burton, 61, "What I don't like is that, under this law, we're considered guilty until proven innocent. We're having to prove our innocence at considerable expense."
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