Given the important nature of prescription drugs to the life-saving treatment of HIV and hepatitis B, and now the cure of hepatitis C and the prevention of HIV, we have long advocated for affordable access to prescription medications. We applaud your commitment to ensuring that beneficiaries can access and afford the prescription medications that their providers prescribe. While we support and share the committee’s intent to lower out-of-pocket costs for consumers, we believe the proposed Rhode Island Drug Cost Review Commission (S 2719) would neither benefit patients in the long run nor result in reducing patients’ costs.
Concerns with Rhode Island Drug Cost Review Commission (H 8220)
We believe policymakers should focus on those issues that directly impact patients, such as PBM regulation and reform, standard plan designs with reasonable deductibles and nominal copays, and ensuring copay assistance counts. For example, Rhode Island still allows issuers to implement harmful copay accumulator adjustment policies that permit double-dipping by payers to take copay assistance without crediting beneficiary out-of-pocket costs.
Support letter to CA State Assembly Appropriations Committee for AB 2180 on cost-sharing
HIV+Hep strongly supports AB 2180. It simply requires that the copay assistance which beneficiaries receive counts towards their out-of-pocket obligations. By passing this law, California will join 20 other states (Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, and Virginia), Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia in protecting consumers by assuring their copay assistance will count towards cost-sharing obligations.
House testimony on FY25 appropriations for HIV and hepatitis programs
Our nation can eliminate both HIV and viral hepatitis, but without an infusion of new resources to accelerate our efforts, we will continue to fall short of these ambitious goals. While we realize strict spending caps are in place, increased investment – and certainly not cuts – in surveillance, education, prevention, and care and treatment will lead to further progress in reducing HIV and viral hepatitis, which include taking a syndemic approach to achieve maximum impact. The programs and funding increases detailed below are pivotal to our nation’s ability to end both these potentially deadly infectious diseases.
Comments to MD Prescription Drug Affordability Stakeholder Council on reviewing prescription drugs
While we support the Maryland Prescription Drug Affordability Board (PDAB) goal of addressing affordability of treatments, we believe that the current approach of the Board to set upper payment limits (UPLs) on the proposed drugs for review will neither benefit patient health outcomes nor result in reduced out-of-pocket costs for patients.