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(Medical Xpress)—In the new health-care climate of the federal Affordable Care Act and efforts to expand Medicaid to accommodate more individuals and children, the need to closely examine ways to best use government funding is becoming increasingly evident.
A new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis examines racial and ethnic differences in Medicaid expenditures for children in the welfare system who use psychotropic drugs – medication for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, that affect a child's mental state.
"Children in the child welfare system are the largest nondisabled users of child mental health services—and the most expensive ofkids to insure for mental health needs," said Ramesh Raghavan, MD, PhD, associate professor at the Brown School and lead author of the study.
"Most of the costs affiliated with mental health coverage are due to pharmaceuticals, and the costs of drugs is very high," he said. "So when you think about the fact that we have around 6 million kids in contact with child-welfare systems nationally – and about half of them have some sort of behavioral or emotional condition that may require drugs for treatment—we really are looking at a huge number of kids who need mental health services."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-04-disparities-medicaid-children-welfare.html
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