House revisits prescription drugs but drops Healey tax plans
'I'm not a doctor ... but I subscribe to the Hippocratic Oath. I do no harm, first. That's why in our House budget coming out, we won't include any taxes on prescription drugs in our budget. That means no arbitrary taxes tied to a drug's list price, or on our consumers filling prescriptions,' Mariano said Wednesday.
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Mariano told reporters after his speech that the House has looked at similar ideas in the past and decided against them, and at least once voted against an amendment to a bill that was similar to the governor's pharmacy assessment.
'It doesn't help,' he said. 'We're concerned about competitiveness and people residing and staying in Massachusetts, and adding two dollars to a prescription just based on the fact that you have to have a prescription — it was not something we wanted to do. It's the wrong message.'
Asked if those concerns around competitiveness influence how he is looking at Healey's other tax proposals in the fiscal 2026 budget, Mariano responded, 'Yes, absolutely.'
The speaker's declarations came midway through public hearings on the governor's budget, and weeks before a House Ways and Means Committee redraft of the bill is due to be released.
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The governor recommended newly applying the sales tax to candy for an estimated $20 million in revenue, applying tobacco taxes to synthetic nicotine pouches, and capping how much taxpayers could claim under a charitable deduction, which officials say is worth up to $164 million. General tax collections outside of the income tax on high earners have slowed, returning to pre-pandemic levels of growth, while spending appetites remain high — and budget writers are looking for creative ways to find revenue to support spending.
'The interesting thing is for some of them, we have a history, and it's not good. We've never supported, I know at least twice we've voted down the sugar tax, so you can extrapolate from that,' Mariano responded.
The speaker's announcement during his speech that the House would not pursue the new taxes on prescription drugs was met with applause from the audience.
Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante, the number-two Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, expressed concerns about the governor's proposal this month at a budget hearing, and asked how the state could avoid the charges being 'transferred onto the consumer by Big Pharma.'
Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz replied that the pharmaceutical tax on manufacturers for exceeding cost growth benchmarks would allow prescription drug prices to grow at the same rate as inflation, but not to exceed inflation.
'I think that, in itself, provides a constraint that protects consumers. Again, this is in the case where we have excess drug pricing,' he said. 'In an ideal world, there'd be no penalties and there'd be no charges.'
Mariano on Wednesday also announced his chamber would revisit some House-backed initiatives that didn't make it into the pharmaceutical law lawmakers hammered out late last year.
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