Washington Blade: D.C. intervenes in HIV drug bias case

Washington Blade: D.C. intervenes in HIV drug bias case

By Lou Chibbaro Jr.

At least three D.C. government agencies “took aggressive steps” earlier this year to stop a health insurance company from discriminating against people with HIV by forcing them to pay excessively high co-payments for their life-saving prescription drugs.

According to Mila Kofman, executive director of the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange, which operates the city’s version of the Obamacare health insurance program, an insurer she declined to identify agreed to drop a practice federal regulators have called “adverse tiering” of drug co-insurance payments.

Kofman said a team of officials with her agency; the D.C. Department of Health; and the D.C. Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking initiated “extensive discussions with this one particular insurance company” after learning the company was placing HIV medications in its highest tier of co-payments for patients. Read the full article here. »

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