Madam Speaker, I am pleased to introduce The Voluntary State Discount Prescription Drug Plan Act of 2007 — a completely voluntary, common sense way to offer prescription drugs at affordable prices to millions of Americans currently struggling without prescription drug coverage.
This legislation would enable states, at their option, to create state discount prescription drug plans that extend Medicaid-negotiated rebates to citizens up to 300% of the poverty line and thereby provide discounts of roughly 40% to 50 million uninsured Americans — all at their local pharmacies, all at no cost to the federal or state government. Just like HMOs and insurance plans in the private sector, participating states would simply leverage their purchasing power to secure better prices on behalf of their citizens. In that regard, our bill would explicitly authorize recent prescription drug affordability initiatives in states like Maryland, Maine and Vermont by removing barriers that have needlessly blocked these efforts in the past.
In 2005, my home state of Maryland passed a state discount prescription drug plan law with the near unanimous support of our General Assembly and our Republican then-Governor, Robert Ehrlich. Unfortunately, that plan was subsequently blocked by the Bush Administration’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for reasons that have never been credibly explained. As a result, the broad bipartisan will of our state has been thwarted and hundreds of thousands of Marylanders have been deprived needed access to affordable prescription drugs. In fact, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data conducted by Families USA and the Center for Policy Alternatives, an estimated half million Marylanders would become eligible for immediate prescription drug price relief under this legislation.
Since these plans are created at the state level and don’t impose any cost on the federal government, we don’t believe states should have to ask the federal government’s permission in order to establish them. For that reason, our legislation makes clear that Maryland — and any other state that so chooses — can set up a state discount prescription drug plan without petitioning CMS for a Section 1115 waiver. Additionally, since these plans rely on government purchasing power rather than government outlays to produce price discounts, we remove CMS’s somewhat contrived requirement that states expend some undefined amount of their own money as part of these plans. Beyond modest administrative costs, it simply isn’t necessary.
Madam Speaker, this legislation represents a significant opportunity to empower states to deliver prescription drug affordability to millions of our citizens who don’t currently have it — at no cost to the federal government. I hope Congress seizes this opportunity, and I invite my colleagues’ support.