IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – An appeals court says Iowa’s largest health insurer improperly refused to pay claims for expensive life-saving drugs for patients with a rare blood disease. The court ruled Tuesday that Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield searched for reasons to deny millions of dollars in claims for drugs used to treat hemophilia, an inherited condition in which patients suffer excessive bleeding.

The medicine at issue, so-called factor drugs, is injected by patients at home so they don’t bleed to death. The ruling means a judge will calculate how much Wellmark owes Iowa City pharmacist Michael Stein. Wellmark is pledging an appeal.

Stein, a provider in Wellmark’s network, dispensed the drugs to 24 patients around the country. He sued Wellmark after the company refused to reimburse him for $7 million in claims.

The recent report on the health of the state showed an issue when it comes to vaccines for older children. The Iowa Department of Public Health’s Don Callahan oversees the immunization program. “In the health ranking, the adolescent immunization rate was low in Iowa, and that’s true. We definitely have more children, more adolescents in Iowa who could be receiving vaccines,” Callahan says.

He says Iowa ranked 44th in the report that looked at three types of vaccines. He says the T-dapp vaccination for whooping cough was one, the menigicocal vaccine that prevents meningitis, and the human papillomavirus virus which can help prevent to different types of cancer. Callahan says as students move toward their teen years, they require different types of vaccinations.

“Children are required to receive vaccines when they enroll in school but these vaccines are different, these are vaccines that are recommended for adolescents,” Callahan says.”So we do pretty good in the state of Iowa regarding childhood immunizations, but we really need to focus on our efforts for immunizations for adolescents.” He says they have been trying to improve the adolescent vaccination rates.

“…A couple of years ago we implemented a T-Dap, the whooping cough vaccine for entering into secondary school. So that is providing a platform four our adolescents to receive that vaccine as well as menigicocal and the H-P-V vaccine,” according to Callahan. You can learn more about Iowa and the 2015 America’s Health Rankings report at: www.americashealthrankings.org.

(Radio Iowa)