Some seniors got lucky over the past few years and on the U.S. Government’s Health Care dime. A new report released by the Office of the Inspector General states that the U.S. Medicare program improperly spent more than $3 million in 2007 and 2008 to buy Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs for senior citizens. Medicare administrators blamed the spending on a software error and said they would try to recover payments to private insurers who administer the program’s drug plans.

Although the purchases were a fraction of Medicare’s drug spending in 2007 and 2008, which totaled $133 billion, Medicare paid a total of $3.1 million for erectile dysfunction drugs in the period examined. Almost all of those funds went to the purchase of the Pfizer product which had 2010 sales of $1.9 billion based on data compiled by Bloomberg.

Sildenafil citrate, sold as Viagra, Revatio and under various other trade names, is a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). It acts by inhibiting cGMP-specific phosphodiesterase type 5, an enzyme that regulates blood flow in the penis.

Since becoming available in 1998, sildenafil has been the prime treatment for erectile dysfunction. In 2000, Viagra sales accounted for 92% of the global market for prescribed erectile dysfunction pills. By 2007, Viagra’s global share had plunged to about 50% due to several factors, including the entry of Cialis and Levitra, along with several counterfeits and clones, and reports of vision loss in people taking PDE5 inhibitors.

The purchases violated a 2005 ban on covering the drugs under the U.S. health program for the elderly and disabled. Medicare “should not have covered these drugs,” George Reeb, acting deputy inspector general for audit services at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recommended that Medicare work with the Food and Drug Administration to maintain a list of prohibited drugs.

Medicare’s administrators told the inspector general that they would fix the flaw by updating computer databases with codes for the prohibited drugs. Medicare also paid for an undetermined amount for erectile dysfunction drugs in 2009 and 2010, Reeb said.

Pfizer’s patent on sildenafil citrate expired in Brazil in 2010 and will expire in the United States in 2012.

Source: United States Office of the Inspector General

Written by Sy Kraft, B.A.