Topeka ? Since 2000, 14 registered sex offenders in Kansas received Medicaid-paid drugs for impotence such as Viagra and four still are getting the medication, the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services said Friday.

The payments cost the state $2,087 since 2000, when Medicaid started paying for Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs, state officials said.

SRS spokesman Mike Deines said the agency, which administers the Medicaid program in the state, has taken steps to make sure the payments are stopped and the four still getting them cannot refill their prescriptions.

“We are coming up with a screening process and in the meantime will be manually blocking these four from getting refills. Their names will be flagged in the computer,” Deines said.

Deines said privacy laws prevent SRS from releasing the names or saying specifically why they are included in the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s public list of sexual and violent offenders, which has more than 3,100 names.

“Do we have programs giving clubs to wife beaters or drinks for those committing DUI?” said KBI spokesman Kyle Smith. “Weird things happen in this world and this is one of the weirder.”

But Smith quickly added he doesn’t believe there was a conscious effort by SRS to allow the payments.

“They added this drug to the Medicaid list, not realizing you were sweeping in people who didn’t need this for the greater public good,” Smith said. “I bet nobody thought about the connection.”

Medicaid is a state and federal program providing health care for about 230,000 poor Kansans each month.

Deines said 922 Kansans received Viagra and similar drugs through Medicaid from Jan. 1, 2004 through April.

Deines said SRS started checking its Medicaid list against the KBI registry after getting questions from reporters earlier this week following reports of sex offenders getting erectile dysfunction drugs through Medicaid in New York.

“We started to take a look and see if that was the case in Kansas,” Deines said. “There was no way for us to know other than going back and matching up names with the sex registry.”

He said SRS found only four still receiving the drug from Medicaid and didn’t know when the others stopped.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has begun notifying state Medicaid agencies they aren’t required to offer erectile dysfunction drugs to sex offenders.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says confusion over a 1998 federal directive apparently resulted in Medicaid-paid Viagra for sex offenders.

In a letter to states, CMS Director Dennis Smith said states should review their procedures and work with physicians and pharmacists to prevent Medicaid payment for sex offenders’ impotence drugs.

Providing the drugs to sex offenders could “constitute fraud, abuse or inappropriate use of Medicaid funds,” he wrote.

The CMS estimated Medicaid spends about $38 million a year nationally on erectile dysfunction drug, all but $2 million for Viagra.