Some want to take Viagra off the Medicaid and Medicare coverage list
“Left unchanged, Medicaid and Medicare will spend about $2 billion on sexual-enhancement drugs between 2006 and 2015, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated.
Taxpayers should pay for medically necessary drugs, not drugs that enhance people’s sex lives – whether recipients are sex offenders or not.”
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I don’t get it. If a normal body function is impaired by disease, and there is a medicine to correct the impairment, isn’t it medically necessary?
Is it merely “enhancement” of a sex-life, or restoration of health that illness has taken away?
Viagra doesn’t just work on penises. It works on blood vessels, and may have side benefits for other vascular or cardiac problems. It may slow the loss of sexual function by improving the blood supply to tissues.
What about other drugs that simply make people feel better and their body work better? Patient’s don’t die if they don’t take them, so how are those meds to be distinguished as medically necessary?
FWIW, I’m not a guy, and my husband doesn’t need any stinkin’ viagra. (Yet.)
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