TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The House Budget Committee on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a proposal aimed at lowering prescription drug prices in Florida amid arguments by critics that it would be unworkable and could lead to drug shortages.
The committee voted 22-2 to back the proposal (HB 697), sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Kincart Jonsson, R-Lakeland. It would need to clear the Health & Human Services Committee before it could go to the full House.
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The bill would take a series of steps, including instituting what is described as a “most-favored-nation” system on drug prices. That would involve analyzing drug prices in certain other countries and using those prices to set limits on what Florida patients could pay.
Kincart Jonsson pointed to people in other countries paying less for medications. “Americans and Floridians are subsidizing the world,” she said.
But pharmaceutical-industry officials opposed the bill, pointing to issues such as prices being set as part of a national system.
Sharon Lamberton, a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry group widely known as PhRMA, described the legislation as a “price control bill” and said it would result in shortages of certain drugs. “It will harm patients and access to medicines,” she said.
Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, has filed a similar bill (SB 1158) in the Senate.