Proposed Medicaid Pharmacy Legislation Could Help Bridge the State Budget Gap While Preserving Patient Access and Choice of Pharmacy
Representative Randy Fine, co-sponsor Rep. Jackie Toledo, and Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez recently announced the details of new proposed legislation that could save the State of Florida as much as $200 million per year while also expanding the Florida Medicaid pharmacy network and access to medication for the state’s anticipated 4.4 million Medicaid recipients. HB 1043 and SB 1306 are bills that would “carve out” pharmacy coverage from the Statewide Medicaid Managed Care system. They call for the end of systemic overpayments to the pharmacy benefit manager (PBMs) middlemen currently overseeing Medicaid pharmacy, as uncovered in the state-funded Milliman Florida Medicaid report released last November. These overpayments — amounting to somewhere between $150 million and $200 million annually — are flowing out of Florida and away from the Medicare patients and providers for whom these monies are designated. These health plans and their PBM middlemen partners would like everyone to believe PBMs are “misunderstood”, that the overpayments are …