With dozens of lobbyists filling the room, a House panel Wednesday approved a proposal aimed at lowering prescription drug prices in Florida.
The House Health Care Facilities & Systems Subcommittee voted 15-1 to move forward with the bill (HB 697), sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Kincart Jonsson, R-Lakeland.
The proposal would take a series of steps, including instituting what is described as a “most favored nation” system on drug prices. That would involve analyzing drug prices in certain other countries and using those prices to set limits on what Florida patients could pay.
Rep. Webster Barnaby, R-Deltona, said Floridians are being “ripped off” in how much they pay for drugs.
“It’s outrageous that we are paying so much more than the Europeans,” Barnaby said. But Sharon Lamberton, a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry group widely known as PhRMA, said a “state-based price control system” could have effects such as causing shortages of some drugs and reductions in access to new treatments.
The bill also drew opposition from the Florida Retail Federation, which represents pharmacies, and the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents pharmacy benefit managers, which act as sort of middlemen with insurers, pharmacies and drug companies.
Rep. Daryl Campbell, D-Fort Lauderdale, cast the only dissenting vote on the bill, which would need to clear the House Budget Committee and the Health & Human Services Committee before it could go to the full House.
Kincart Jonsson called the bill a “balanced and common-sense measure.”
Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, has filed a similar bill (SB 1158) in the Senate.
