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SALT LAKE CITY — Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, says he will be introducing a bill in next year's legislative session that is designed to reduce how much consumers pay for prescription drugs.
Ray said this summer he spent some of this year trying to determine, with regard to prescription drugs, "Where are the price increases coming from?"
In studying the issue, he said, he discovered a practice in which insurance companies receive a manufacturer rebate on prescription drugs purchased by a person enrolled in a health coverage plan with them, even when that person's plan did not pay for any of that purchase because their out-of-pocket costs have not reached their deductible.
Ray said his bill would change that, and ensure that the rebate in such instances will be "passed to the consumer to help them save money," rather than be used as "a profit (source) against these consumers that can't afford it in the first place."
"I would think that the insurance companies and the other players in this would understand that," he said Wednesday at a press conference at the state Capitol.
Ray said legislation to help patients save money is critically important because prescription drug costs are "just phenomenal at this point."
"We have to sit down and we have to fix this," he said.
Rep. Brad Daw, R-Orem, joined Ray to offer his support for the bill.
"The drug financing system in this country is a morass, and kudos to Rep. Ray for trying to untangle it," Daw said.
Ray said the bill is uniquely designed compared to bills in other states aimed at reducing prescription drug costs, but that "if there’s some other standards that are working for other states, we’ll certainly (try) to incorporate that into ours."
The text of the bill has not yet been made public.
About $328.6 billion was spent on purchasing prescription drugs in the United States in 2016, more than eight times higher than total national expenditures in 1990, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The American Hospital Association says growth in drug costs, per inpatient admission, grew 38 percent from 2013 to 2015 alone, and that more than 90 percent of hospitals across the country identify rising drug expenditure costs is "of moderate or severe concern."
Rising drug prices have also caught the ire of Intermountain Healthcare CEO Marc Harrison, who called them "outrageous" last month at the organization's annual report to the community. Intermountain is launching its own not-for-profit generic drugmaking company in 2019.
"Even as our other costs decrease through hard work, what I can tell you is that we expect a 12 to 14 percent increase in pharma costs per year," Harrison in his presentation at the time.
