House bill aims to fight rising drug costs

HARTFORD — Connecticut’s strongest effort yet to curb skyrocketing prescription drug costs unanimously passed the House on Friday.

The bill seeks to rein in drug prices by increasing price transparency, establishing a trigger point at which manufacturers must explain cost spikes and forcing drugmakers to reveal available rebates. Insurance companies would have to show how they are passing rebates down to consumers at point of sale or reducing premium costs instead.

“This is all about transparency and finding out what the reasons for the cost drivers are,” said state Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, House chairman of the insurance committee.

The measure will pass to the Senate for a vote.

“I think this is a paradigm of transparency that protects the consumer going forward,” said state Rep. Livvy Floren, R-Greenwich.

A poll conducted in February for the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut found 88 percent of those taking prescriptions are worried about paying for their medicine.

Scanlon, the state insurance commissioner and the state comptroller worked closely on this bill, which they hope will provide consumers with the information to choose more affordable insurance plans based on their needs, driving up competition and driving down drug and plan costs.

“This plan, to deliver drug pricing transparency for the first time in Connecticut, will shine a bright light onto a shadowy market and extend free-market fairness to the pharmaceutical marketplace,” said state Comptroller Kevin Lembo, who advocated for the bill’s passage in an April press conference.

The bill is part of a growing national movement to provide consumers with more health cost information.

Advocates say the best way to bring medical and drug costs under control is by giving patients upfront prices and information about underlying costs so they can make rational choices — now that consumers are on the hook for payments that can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

“The first step is to just have those numbers be public,” said Elisabeth Rosenthal, editor-in-chief at Kaiser Health News, who spoke in Hartford on April 25. “When I go to shop for a loaf of bread ... I don’t have to hire a consultant to tell me what it’s going to cost.”