Committee pauses pharmacy-accessibility bill after debate over costs, implementation

Representative Jen Daley Provo presented HB 123, the pharmacy accessibility amendments, telling the House Health and Human Services Committee the bill’s first substitute would require pharmacies to use "best efforts" to provide prescription information in at least one accessible format — large print, braille, or an auditory option — and that the substitute delayed implementation to ease cost and supply concerns.

The bill aims to address cases in which visually impaired patients have received prescription labels they cannot read. "So many other blind and low vision individuals across the state, 45,000 individuals in Utah, identify as having a significant vision loss," Everett Bacon, president of the National Federation of the Blind of Utah, told the committee. He described instances in which people were…