WASHINGTON The government is gainful millions for risky medications that have never been reviewed for safety and effectiveness end are still covered under Medicaid, an Associated Press analysis of federal facts has found.

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Taxpayers have shelled out at least $200 very great number since 2004 for such drugs. Yet the Food and Drug Administration says unapproved prescription drugs are a public health problem, and some unapproved medications have been linked to dozens of deaths.

Millions of private patients are taking them as well-head, and their availability may create a false sense of security.

The AP decomposition found that Medicaid, which serves low-income people, paid within a little $198 million from 2004 to 2007 on the side of additional than 100 unapproved drugs. Data towards 2008 were not available on the contrary unapproved drugs still are being sold. The AP checked the medications against FDA databases, using agency guidelines to lead if they were unapproved. The FDA says in that place may be thousands of similar drugs on the emporium.

The medications are mainly for common conditions like colds and pain. They date back decades, before the FDA tightened its review of drugs in the early 1960s. The FDA says it is distressing to squeeze them from the market, but conflicting federal laws allow the Medicaid health program for low-income people to pay on account of them.

Medicaid officials acknowledge the enigma, but say they need help from Congress to make firm it. The FDA and Medicaid are part of the Health and Human Services Department, but the FDA has further to compile a possessor list of unapproved drugs, and Medicaid - which may be the biggest purchaser - keeps profitable.

“I imagine this is something we ought to look at self-same hard, and we ought to fix it,” said Medicaid grand Herb Kuhn. “It raises a whole set of questions, not only in terms of safeness, but in the efficiency of the program - to make without doubt we are getting the right set of services for beneficiaries.”

At a time when families, businesses and government are struggling with health care costs and 46 million people are uninsured, payments for questionable medications amount to an unplugged chink in the system.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has asked the HHS inspector general to investigate.

That unapproved prescript drugs have existence possible to be sold in the United States surprises even doctors and pharmacists. But the FDA estimates they account for 2 percent of all prescriptions filled by U.S. pharmacies, about 72 million scripts a year. Private assurance plans also cover them.

The roots of the problem savor back in time, tangled in layers of legalese.

It wasn’t until 1962 that Congress ordered the FDA to review all new medications for effectiveness. Thousands of drugs already on the market were also supposed to be evaluated. But some manufacturers claimed their medications were grandfathered under earlier laws, and at the very time under the 1962 bill.

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