Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Health Care Costs topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
House adopts technical and reimbursement clarifications for pharmacy payments in SB 140
Summary
Lawmakers amended Senate Bill 140 to correct terminology and to set pharmacy reimbursement based on reported acquisition cost plus a Medicaid dispensing fee rather than a national average drug cost.
The House took up Senate Bill 140 on second reading and considered multiple technical and reimbursement amendments. Representative Carball (floor) presented an amendment that "really has 2 parts": a technical correction replacing the term "drugstore" with "pharmacy" and clarifying references to third‑party administrator contracts instead of pharmacy‑benefit‑manager contracts for employers of a certain size.
A subsequent amendment (amendment 3) changed reimbursement language: rather than tying pharmacy reimbursement to the national average drug acquisition cost, the amendment set reimbursement to pharmacies' reported acquisition costs for prescriptions coded by National Drug Codes and allowed a dispensing fee equal to the Medicaid dispensing fee for services dispensed. Representative McGuire said the amendment "is keeping our pharmacies whole" and cited other states that use a similar model. Representative Rosen Carball opposed amendment 3 on the grounds it "would actually give those pharmacies... more because it doesn't take into account discounts, and so we're putting more costs on the backs of our employers."
The floor adopted amendment language by voice votes and the bill was moved to engrossment. Proponents framed the changes as protecting neighborhood pharmacies and aligning reimbursement to acquisition cost plus dispensing fee; opponents warned about employer cost impacts and discount accounting.
Ending note: The House adopted the technical terminology fixes and the reimbursement amendment and ordered the bill to engrossment for further consideration.
