Medicaid drug rule may hurt recipients

WASHINGTON — An obscure provision slipped into a $120 billion Iraq spending bill in May threatens to leave some poor and disabled Medicaid recipients without prescription drugs in October.

In a case of unintended consequences, Congress inserted a rule cracking down on Medicaid fraud that requires that all non-electronic prescriptions for Medicaid patients be written on tamper-resistant paper.

The rule was devised as a way to raise nearly $150 million over five years for public hospitals, the amount that Medicaid fraud costs the federal government.