The most common drug class taken among patients aged 18-44 is an antidepressant. Furhter, these relatively young and healthy patients are likely to be the ones who enroll in healht plans within the health insurance exchanges. The question is, how easily can patients access information about antidepressant coverage?
According to a recent RWJ report, the answers are “not easily.”
Of the five marketplace web sites we study, only the two run through healthcare.gov (Alabama and Florida) have insurer formulary links that are posted directly on the anonymous plan browsing page. While that makes finding the prescription drug lists the easiest theoretically, the links provided are not always correct and sometimes lead to an insurer’s homepage or other location, making the formulary difficult to find.
If patients are able to find information about antidepressant coverage, how good is the coverage? The answer is, not great.
Most insurers…cover a broad spectrum of antidepressants, but there is variability. While 26 of the 35 insurers studied across the five states exclude five or fewer antidepressants, some exclude 12 to 15.