Senate adopts PACT Act to increase drug-price transparency and require PBM and private‑equity oversight

The Massachusetts Senate accepted and passed the conference committee report on the pharmaceutical access, cost and transparency package known in the chamber as the PACT Act (S.3012) and its companion market‑oversight measure (H.5159), voting by voice to send both bills to be signed by the president and laid before the governor for approbation.

Senator Cindy F. Friedman (4th Middlesex), who presented the conference committee report, said the package is the "first step" toward curbing the rising cost of critical medicines and increasing oversight of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and pharmaceutical firms. Friedman said the bill brings pharmaceuticals and PBMs into CHIA/HPC cost‑trend hearings, requires public testimony from those entities, and directs the Division of Insurance (DOI) to consider affordability when reviewing rates. "It puts pharmaceuticals and PBMs under the cost trend hearing umbrella," she said during her explanation to the chamber.

Key provisions described on the floor include: requiring CHIA/HPC to request and, in some cases,…