Should Employers Provide Reimbursement for Medical Marijuana Costs?
An interesting article from Workforce Management:
Now that more states are legalizing the sale of the marijuana used solely as a medicine, the next hurdle for reformers who say the drug is more cost-effective than pharmaceuticals is getting those who pay for health care—insurers and employers—to reimburse patients for its use.
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Reimbursing patients who use it could push them away from otherwise costly drugs that some advocates say are not as effective. Employers, as payers of health care, should champion the legalization of medical marijuana as a potential cost-saving tool, advocates say.
It's certainly the case that many patients can effectively treat specific conditions with marijuana at a lower cost than the pharmaceutical alternatives. For starters, marijuana is vastly cheaper than Marinol, which contains the same main ingredient. It would be interesting to see some research into how medical costs for marijuana patients compare overall to those of patients treating the same conditions with other drugs. While you're at it, it would worth investigating which group is happier with their medicine.
To whatever extent medical marijuana offers savings on health care costs, it's another example of the massive often-invisible expenses created by the insane federal prohibition of medical marijuana. It's presently illegal under federal law for health care providers to cover marijuana-related expenses, which just goes to show how DEA raids were just one dimension of the government's continuing war on medical marijuana.
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redditIt's cheaper for employers
Comment posted by Anonymous on Fri, 07/31/2009 - 5:21pmIt's cheaper for employers to just let their employees pay for their own pot. If we push to have employers pay for employees' medical marijuana we'll just turn a lot of people off. Right or wrong, the perception out there is that most medical users aren't really sick. They just like to get high. I think most people would be strongly opposed to forcing employers to pay for medical marijuana, especially since employees bear most of the cost of health insurance these days. A lot of people would be downright pissed off because they'll feel like they are having to subsidize recreational pot smoking every time they pay a health insurance premium. It would be okay to push for this if marijuana was like any other drug, sold by prescription only at pharmacies, but with the present free for all where anyone with a couple of hundred bucks can get a medical marijuana card, pushing for employers to have to pay for medical marijuana would just piss too many people off and probably hurt the cause.
I know how to stop the dealers!
Comment posted by Tony Mann on Mon, 08/03/2009 - 7:16pmWe can send them all to a socially engineering drug treatment program ordered by a court! Ye it will work didn't work here? Never mind.
Run from the cure; Rick Simpson on youtube:
Comment posted by NorCalMedicalCannabisPeople on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 2:02pmAlso 6 natural cures for cancer . Become sustainable,be organic Peace,love,happiness and prosperity to all from James