Florida’s largest health insurance company will stop covering OxyContin, the brand name for prescription opioid, beginning Jan. 1, Miami Herald reported.
Instead, Florida Blue will cover an alternative opioid that users can't crush to inject or snort, which the company hopes will reduce the potential for abuse, according to the Herald.
Florida Blue said the amount of opioids prescribed to its more than 5 million members creates a risk for abuse and provides evidence that doctors are giving out more of the addictive drug than than patients need, Scott McClelland, vice president of commercial and specialty pharmacy, told the Herald.