by Jane Anderson
State lawmakers will continue to focus on the cost of
prescription drugs as the 2020 legislative season gets underway, potentially
advancing measures to require the disclosure of manufacturer drug pricing
information and bills to limit or eliminate the role PBMs play in state
Medicaid programs.
However, the abbreviated length of the election-year legislative
sessions, plus some unexpected hiccups in states that already have passed bills
on those issues, could limit how much actually gets done at the state level in
2020, legislative observers say.
"We expect considerable action this year, but it is a short
session in most states, which limits the number of bills that will be considered,"
says Trish Riley, executive director of the National Academy for State Health
Policy. "We expect to see bills that address prices, address price gouging
[and] allow importation. Several states may advance bills to allow a buy-in to
public programs and the ability to bulk purchase drugs."
In recent years, state lawmakers have been looking into managed
care programs and their drug spend, turning to their PBM contracts as a source
of potential savings, says Matt Magner, director of state government affairs
for the National Community Pharmacists Association. West Virginia, for example,
decided in 2017 to carve out its pharmacy benefits from its Medicaid program,
Magner says, noting, "they saved $54 million in the first year they did
that."
Still, the pace of state legislative action regarding PBMs may
not be as brisk in 2020 as it was in 2019. Riley says that PBMs already have
been the subject of considerable state action, so it's not clear how many more
states will consider bills on PBM issues in 2020. "We may see several more
states eliminate or deeply regulate PBMs in Medicaid and develop more
enforceable contracts to ensure discounts are passed through," she says.
Drug pricing likely will stay in the news, says Jeff Myers,
founder of OptDis, but he anticipates a slowdown in drug price transparency
legislation, in part because states that have approved such legislation are
running into roadblocks in implementation.
No comments:
Post a Comment