Fear Not, Be Smart: How to Deal with Medical Marijuana

Thursday, July 30, 2015 | 0

The headline from WorkCompCentral on July 27 is Comp Industry Urged to Prepare for Medical Marijuana. As usual, it's a solid and informative article from a great source (and I'm not just saying that because Prium's own Mark Pew is quoted throughout). Nonetheless, I'm always concerned when I hear talk of medical marijuana that takes on a foreboding and troubling tone. 

I'm sure Sedgwick's Mr. Canavan meant no harm. And I have to admit that I wasn't present. But comments like, "You can blame New Mexico the next time you pay for medical marijuana" strike me as fodder for filling hotel ballrooms at conferences and are not reflective of the actual medical and legal realities with which we're dealing.

Back in April, I wrote the following:

"Did you know that of the 24 states with medical marijuana laws, most have either explicit or implicit provisions allowing for commercial payers to avoid reimbursement for medical marijuana?

Did you know that most of these states have a list of allowable conditions that provide a second layer of potential protection for commercial payers?

Did you know that most of these states have medical treatment guidelines that address the use of medical marijuana?

Did you know that the New Mexico cases that have most of our industry concerned about this issue exhibit systemic failure on the part of the payers in those cases to take advantage of these various provisions and protections?"

So let's all take a deep, cleansing breath. If we're smart about this -- if states are thinking about evidence-based guidelines and payer carve-outs, if payers are thinking about utilization review and peer review, if doctors are thinking about what's best for patients -- we can keep medical marijuana in the box in which it belongs.

Mark Pew is right that the legalization of medical marijuana is inevitable and the advent of recreational marijuana is upon us. But the risk management issue should be in the areas of drug-free workplace issues and on-the-job safety.  

When it comes to injured worker treatment, we're not suggesting that medical marijuana is a nonevent that deserves no attention. We're suggesting that smart payers with smart medical management strategies need not fear being overwhelmed with medical marijuana spend.

Michael Gavin is president of Prium, a national cost-containment firm for the workers' compensation industry. This column was reprinted with permission from the firm's Evidence Based blog.