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Summary
Governor Gavin Newsom will strive to regulate pharmaceutical intermediaries for accusing the increase in the cost of medical prescription drugs in California, eight months after the veto of such a bill.
Governor Gavin Newsom has announced today that it will strive to regulate drugs released on a prescription that it has accused of increasing the cost of patients less than a year after veto such supervision for companies called pharmacy managers.
The plan – part of the revised state budget proposal that Newsom will open entirely on Wednesday – calls for licensing pharmacies through the California Department of Management Health Care and requires them to report their operational and financial details.
“The prices of medical prescription drugs are out of control and we are light on the hidden costs,” Newsom says in a statement.
California has long been striving Follow the pharmacy managers more closelywhich serve as intermediaries between insurance companies and manufacturers of pharmaceutical drugs control the list of medicines covered by health insurance plans, negotiating their prices and processing claims. Critics say these companies are unnecessary to increase costs by sticking to fees and holding the manufacturer’s discounts as a profit. They can also limit access to patients to some medicines with a higher price.
But the legislative efforts to raise them have repeatedly dry up in front of a powerful industrial lobby, which claims that the tougher regulations will increase health insurance premiums with billions of dollars a year.
Last year, a measure Do it to the Newsom Bureau, which would require pharmacy managers to receive a license through the State Insurance Department, to open the prices they pay, and the discounts negotiating with drug manufacturers, and then transfer 100% of these discounts to insurance plans.
NEWSOM imposed it on a veto in September, Writing in a message that he is not convinced that the “expansive license scheme of the bill” will achieve the desired result of reducing costs.
“We need more detailed information to fully understand the engines of the market spending market for prescription drugs and the role that (pharmacy managers) play in pricing,” says the governor at the time.
Changing the heart over regulations?
The governor’s service did not explain why Newsom’s perspective on regulations has shifted in the eight months since.
According to a summary of his office, his proposal will also allow the state to review the contracts of pharmacy managers, to carry out financial audits and to issue penalties and to require companies to report detailed data on the pricing of medicines in the California Department of Access and Health Information.
In recent years, pressure has increased on politicians at national level to take action on drug prices, which are one of the main drivers of increased medical expenses. In just one year, between 2022 and 2023, US drug costs have increased by 13.6%According to a study by national pharmaceutical trends. Other studies show that Americans pay almost three times more as people in other countries for the same drugs.
In California, the cost of prescribed medicines has increased by 56%since the state first tracked data in 2017. The costs between 2017 and 2023, the latest data for the year has jumped by nearly $ 9 billion, according to a State Report on Drug ExpenditureS
President Donald Trump this week also signed an executive order Requireing manufacturers to reduce the price prescription drugs over the next 30 days or are confronted with new restrictions on what the Federal Government will pay, although it is not clear how it will work.
Another suggestion, Senate Bill 41Renoving many of the provisions of the measure that Newsom imposed on the veto last year, it also went through the legislative power of this session and adopted its first committee last month.
Senator Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, is the author of the veto measure last year and continued to run bills aimed at reducing drug costs. Winer said in a statement today that Newsom’s message is a “solid step” to improve the accessibility of medical prescription drugs, but this should be done more.
Wiener, who is a vocal critic of Newsom’s Drug Policy, has again introduced a bill from last year, which outlines clear bans on pharmacy managers, including prohibiting patients from filling in recipes in specific pharmacies.
Newsom’s announcement also included efforts to expand the role of Calrx, an effort of the state worth $ 100 million to buy and produce certain highly used medicines such as insulin and NaloxoneOpioid reversing drugs.
Calrx is currently tasked with providing lower prices for generic drugs, but the new proposal would allow the state to pursue savings of costs for brand drugs with names. This would give California more flexibility to respond to the problems of the supply chain or “politically motivated” federal restrictions placed on drugs such as Mifepristone, the abortion pill, according to a Newsom cabinet.
In 2023, Newsom ordered state agencies to stocks 250,000 abortion pills Following a decision of the Federal Court of Texas, it has temporarily abolished the approval of the FDA of the drug. This stock was exhausted in 2024, but the fate of using the pills remains questionable, as conservative groups continue to continue judicial action to block its use.