Boston Medical Center’s Dr. Timothy Naimi told The Boston Globe, “What would be helpful to know would be what proportion of Medicare beneficiaries in these states are actually using medical marijuana, because that would help to determine whether reductions in prescribing are actually due to marijuana laws”. Above, extract is packaged for market.
Advertisement
Patients fill significantly fewer prescriptions for conditions like nausea and pain in states where medical marijuana is available, researchers reported Wednesday in one of the first studies to examine how medical cannabis might be affecting approved treatments.
To come up with those figures, researchers looked at Medicare data from 2010 to 2013.
David Bradford and Ashley Bradford analyzed Medicare Part D data from the 17 states that legalized medical uses of marijuana as of 2013, plus the District of Columbia; 25 states have now approved medical marijuana in some fashion, including Georgia, each with a different set of rules.
“What’s concerning is we keep making more and more reasons to have access to this and it starts infiltrating more and more into society causing greater problems”.
The Bradfords hope their research may help spur Congress to change federal law to allow for more and better research on the benefits and possible downsides of medical marijuana. “Although it’s a natural substance, because it does things that are unnatural to the body and to the mind, I don’t think that it’s a good idea to legalize it. Period”. It also adds two new medical conditions – post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illnesses with which patients have less than six months to live – to the current list of 39 qualifying conditions that can be treated with cannabinoids. First, previous studies on the Medicare populations have suggested that Medicare patients make up a small percentage of people who use medical marijuana and that only 13 to 27 percent of people who used medical marijuana are age 50 or older. After the panel makes recommendations on the petitions, the health department will hold a public hearing. Insurance companies and Medicare do not cover it, so patients pay for it out of pocket.
They found that for all conditions, except glaucoma and spasticity, fewer prescriptions were written when a medical marijuana law was in effect. Earlier this year, PTSD was among eight medical conditions the Illinois Medical Cannabis Advisory Board recommended adding to the program, but the Illinois Department of Public Health, under direction from the administration of Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, rejected all eight conditions.
Researchers cite the example of blood-thinning medication and point out that marijuana was never considered an alternative in that case and hence the number of prescriptions was not affected by legalization of medical marijuana.
Lawyers have submitted at least two requests for formal opinions on the matter to the state Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Conduct. He isn’t associated with the study. For example, daily doses of prescription drugs for pain and depression fell by 1,826 and 265, respectively.
Wolski, with the Coalition for Medical Marijuana, believes the process could take almost a year.
Advertisement
Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
