Maryland Matters
December 28, 2024
Danielle Brown
Excerpt:
PDAB selects drugs for cost review
2024 also saw movement by the Prescription Drug Affordability Board, charged with lowering prescription drug costs for employees on state health insurance plans, after years of administrative challenges and opposition delayed its ability get started.
The board this year finally selected the first six drugs for cost review: Dupixent, Farxiga, Jardiance, Ozempic, Skyrizi and Trulicity, prescription medications used to treat conditions including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, eczema, Crohn’s disease and more.
The cost review is still underway. If it ends up determining that any of those drugs are “unaffordable” for Marylanders, the board will look to various methods to reduce prices. That could include setting an upper payment limit on those medications so state and local governments have a price ceiling that the state is willing to pay drug manufacturers for those drugs.
Vinny DeMarco, president of Maryland Health Care for All and staunch supporter of the board, wishes that the board’s work began earlier.
“We fully expected the state and local government upper payment limit to be in place by 2023. That was undermined for former Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of the funding bill and he slow-walked appointments and other measures that really delayed it a couple years,” DeMarco said.
The board took a year to set-up regulatory frameworks to conduct business and was only able to select the six drugs for a cost-review study in May.
“We wish it had happened years ago,” said DeMarco, of the board that was authorized in a 2019 law.”
Read the full article at MarylandMatters.org
Last modified: January 2, 2025
