3. Medication access¶
Status: data published September 2026; family guide in review.
The gap¶
For most conditions a missed dose is a nuisance. For epilepsy it can be a seizure that day, an emergency room visit, a lost driver's license, or worse. Nationally, among adults with active epilepsy, about 13 percent say they could not afford their prescription and about 9 percent skipped doses to save money. Two other things stand between a Minnesota family and the pill: shortages (clobazam has been hard to find on and off since 2020) and distance. Minnesota has lost 13 percent of its community pharmacies since 2009, and about one in five residents now lives in a low-access area.
What the data shows¶
We pulled every Minnesota Medicaid antiseizure prescription from 2019 through early 2026 from the federal State Drug Utilization Data.
| 2025 | Value |
|---|---|
| Antiseizure prescriptions paid by Minnesota Medicaid | about 335,000 |
| Total reimbursed | $44 million |
| Average cost, lamotrigine (most common) | $24 per prescription |
| Average cost, rescue diazepam | $1,444 |
| Average cost, cannabidiol (Epidiolex) | $3,739 |
| Average cost, vigabatrin | $13,724 |
Clobazam prescriptions fell 34 percent between the first and second quarters of 2024, the one drop in the file that lines up with a known national supply problem. Medicaid covers at most a third of Minnesotans with epilepsy; commercial claims are held by MDH and we have asked for them.
Explore: which drugs, and what they cost¶
Click a drug name in the legend to show or hide it. The most common drugs are cheap generics. The drugs a child with hard-to-control epilepsy needs are the expensive ones.
Try it: the pharmacy problem solver¶
Answer three questions and get the next step for today.
Check yourself¶
1. A pharmacy is out of your seizure medicine. What is the first question to ask?
"Is this a national shortage or just your stock?" A stock problem is fixed by a transfer or an independent pharmacy; a national shortage needs the prescriber the same day.
2. You have two days of pills left and the plan wants prior authorization. What do you say?
"Emergency supply." Medical Assistance and most plans allow a 72-hour fill while the authorization is processed. Never skip doses while waiting.
3. Why does a broad drop across many drugs in one quarter probably not mean a shortage?
Shortages hit one molecule. A drop across unrelated drugs at once points to fewer people enrolled or late reporting. In 2024 Minnesota's Medicaid renewals fit that pattern.
What we are doing this year¶
- Keeping this dashboard current each quarter and flagging shortage signals.
- Mapping distance from every school district to the nearest retail pharmacy. First pass, September 2026: 15 districts are more than 15 miles from any retail pharmacy, and 14 of those also post no findable seizure plan. Grygla, Red Lake, Floodwood, and Nett Lake are farthest. Look up any district in the Distance to Care Lookup.
- Publishing a one-page family guide, "When the pharmacy can't fill your seizure medicine," in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Somali, distributed through the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota's care coordinators and the pediatric epilepsy clinics.
- Supporting HF 3652 / SF 3786, which would cap what commercial plans can charge for epilepsy drugs at $25 a month, the same protection diabetes and asthma already have. The state's own actuaries priced it at four cents per member per month. Students are ready to testify when it is heard.
Help affording medication now¶
See Resources & Support for assistance programs, Medical Assistance, and MA-TEFRA.