If the legislators who have blocked a Utah PDL have any evidence that it wouldn't work as well as, or better than, it does in 26 other states and most private health insurance plans, they should say so.
If they don't, then it is clear whose interests are really being protected by the logjam. It sure as heck ain't the poor.
In California, the pharmaceutical industry just spent $80 million defeating a ballot initiative that would have forced drug manufacturers to give steep discounts to the uninsured as a price of staying on that state's PDL.
In Georgia, a scandal is growing around an alleged attempt by one firm to buy some of its drugs onto that state's PDL even though they had been ruled dangerous, overpriced, or both.
That big pharma will go to great lengths to manipulate any system is no surprise.
What is surprising is that Utah lawmakers continue to block the PDL pilot project envisioned by Health Director David Sundwall. A move by Rep. Steve Mascaro last week to move it along was literally shouted down by Senate Majority Leader Pete Knudson.
The executive branch could establish a PDL by itself and, if the Legislature doesn't get with the program by the end of the next regular session, it should.
Sundwall estimates taxpayers could save some $5 million a year just by steering Medicaid recipients who use acid reflux and cholesterol-lowering drugs to particular brands or generics. That would more than pay for the much-needed restoration of dental benefits for children and, extended to more medicines, would provide more care for the needy without digging more deeply into the taxpayers' pockets.
Doctors who believe that a Medicaid patient really needs an unlisted drug could get it for them by clearing it with the state, a simple process that can be copied from other states.
That bypass procedure, combined with Sundwall's pledge not to limit access to medicines for mental illness, should be enough to get everyone - except, of course, the drug makers - to sign on.
Lawmakers need to decide whose side they are on. With Sundwall, the taxpayers and the poor, or with big pharma.
