Curbing Medicaid abuse

(Spartanburg) Herald-Journal

South Carolina used a commonsense, experimental approach to fighting Medicaid abuse and came up with an effective plan. It's an approach that should be applied to other problems.

The state launched a pilot program in January to reduce the abuse of Medicaid by people who use multiple doctors and multiple pharmacies to obtain drugs like Oxycontin, methadone, Xanax and Adderall. The theory was that people were abusing the system, some because they are addicts and others because they were selling their excess drugs. The program allowed patients to pick one pharmacy and forced them to use that pharmacy for all their prescriptions.

In nine months, the program, working with only 48 patients, saved an astonishing $321,500. The participants reduced their prescriptions by 40 percent and cut down on hospital visits by 21 percent. …

Best of all, the program came about in a way that made sense. Unlike so many theoretical government fixes that hype unproven plans to make enormous changes in how things are run, the state tried this on a small, inexpensive scale, found that it worked, and expanded it.

The sprinkler bill

A renewed push is expected in January to encourage the use of fire sprinkler systems in South Carolina. What's needed is a mandate for most commercial properties — including all existing hotels — to have sprinklers, and a serious incentive to increase their use in all commercial properties and new home construction. …

The push to expand sprinkler use began in 2004 after a hotel fire in Greenville killed six people. That effort resulted in the wholly inadequate bill that didn't require existing hotels to add sprinklers, but instead required a placard be hung to warn guests if a hotel does not have the lifesaving devices.

The fight was renewed in 2007 after a fire in Charleston killed nine firefighters and a beach house fire in North Carolina killed seven college students from South Carolina. The effort faded, and a local-option tax credit equal to one-quarter of the cost of a sprinkler system that would be matched by the state was the less-than-adequate result.

This state has seen an inordinate amount of tragedy that could have been prevented by sprinklers.