HB1558

House Bill 1558 amends the Arkansas Prior Authorization Transparency Act concerning medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid and alcohol addiction. The bill prohibits healthcare insurers, including Medicaid, from requiring prior authorization for FDA-approved formulations of buprenorphine, naloxone, naltrexone, and methadone, subject to specific conditions. It mandates that insurers place at least one product for each of these medications on the lowest-cost benefit tier of their drug formularies. For the Arkansas Medicaid Program, the prohibition on prior authorization applies specifically to drugs designated as preferred on the state's evidence-based preferred drug list. The bill also stipulates that prescriptions for MAT shall not count toward a patient's prescription count limits imposed by insurers. Finally, it allows insurers to require prior authorization for new, more expensive, or not demonstrably more effective MAT formulations released after April 12, 2019.