Latest news with #Cullison
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
House set to approve expansion of drug board's authority to lower costs
Medication vials marked for calibration await counting at the Exchange Pharmacy at Joint Base Andrews in Camp Spring in this file photo from 2023. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Jared Duhon/U.S. Air Force) House Democrats beat back a series of Republican amendments on party-line votes Wednesday, setting up a final vote on a proposal to expand the authority of a state board created to lower prescription drug prices in Maryland. Del. Bonnie Cullison (D-Montgomery) defended House Bill 424, which would expand the authority of the Prescription Drug Affordability Board from drugs purchased by state health plans to drugs purchased by any drug provider in the state. She rejected GOP arguments that the board would set a limit on prices. 'We're not controlling anyone's prices. We are controlling our own budgets,' Cullison said of the upper payment limits the board could set. 'We cannot price it. What we can say is, 'This is how much we're going to pay. This is how much we can afford.'' The exchange, and the failed Republican amendments, may have given some a twinge of déjà vu: Both were strikingly similar to the 2019 debate when PDAB was first approved. 'We're not telling the pharmaceutical companies what they can charge,' Cullison said on March 26, 2019, according to a Maryland Matters account. 'We are telling them what Maryland is willing to pay.' Despite its creation in 2019, PDAB has little to show to for its efforts so far, due to administrative delays and challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. It was only last year that the board identified six common prescription drugs that it is currently analyzing the affordability of, but it has not yet negotiated lower costs for any medications. Republicans are skeptical of the board's ability to reduce costs for Marylanders, and believe it could create more problems than it solves. Among their amendments were two — to ensure that the board's actions do not end up restricting access to life-saving drugs, and to protects parts of the pharmaceutical industry from negative impacts by the board. 'The people in this industry, I don't think any of them are villains,' Minority Leader Jason C. Buckel (R-Allegany) said. 'I don't think any of them are heroes. The pharmaceutical manufacturers, the insurers, the pharmacies, the doctors — all of them take a little cut of where all the money goes. All of them are affected by this in certain ways.' He offered an amendment that would require the board to certify that its actions would not create access issues for patients. But Cullison noted that the board already considers the potential affect on the supply and access to drugs before moving forward on any actions for cost reduction. 'In the original statute that created the Prescription Drug Affordability Board, the purpose was to protect Marylanders, protect members of the supply chain, including pharmacies, from the high cost of prescription drugs,' she said. Buckel also offered an amendment to require a study of the effects upper payment limits would have on the biotechnology industry. Both amendments failed on party lines. Cullison said the board already assesses how its actions might affect both patients and stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry. That said, Cullison conceded that because the board has not yet implemented any cost reduction efforts, the state does 'not have an example' of the complete outcomes of PDAB actions. 'We have a theory. We have a concept. We're ready to go to test this concept,' she said. 'But I know that we have to do something. We cannot continue at this rate of increase for pharmaceutical drugs.' Minority Whip Jesse T. Pippy (R-Frederick) offered an amendment to require approval from the state's Legislative Policy Committee before the board can place an upper payment limit on prescription drugs. 'We have no idea how this is going to play out,' Pippy said. 'Simply adding the check and balance as we had in the original legislation … I think is the right decision. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE 'It's a tremendous amount of unknown with a significant amount of consequences if this goes south,' he said. But Cullison said the Legislative Policy Committee has already weighed in on the upper payment limit process, and the board should not have to seek additional approval. Pippy's amendment failed, as did the remaining four Republican-sponsored amendments. The House will likely vote on the bill on HB 424 — which is co-sponsored by Del. Jennifer White Holland (D-Baltimore County) — this week and move it to the Senate, where its fate is less certain. Senate Bill 357, sponsored by Sen. Dawn Gile (D-Anne Arundel), has yet to move out of the Senate Finance Committee, but Giles believes it will get a committee vote next week. Gile said her staff is 'working out some amendments' on the Senate version of the legislation. Vincent DeMarco, president of Maryland Health Care for All, said that back in 2019, the Senate was more skeptical of the PDAB proposal. It initially proposed setting up a study of prescription drug affordability challenges and potential options to address the issue, but the chamber agreed to PDAB after the House added the Legislative Policy Committee review and narrowed the board's scope to just state health plans – which the current bill would reverse. DeMarco said he is 'feeling very hopeful about the Senate' this year. 'We never want to prejudge anything or count any chickens, but based on reactions at the hearing and talking to individual senators, we're feeling hopeful,' he said. DeMarco also anticipates that the House will approve the legislation with an 'overwhelming vote,' which he says will 'help to move the issue forward in the Senate.'
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Apparent immigration arrests raise concern, questions in Durham neighborhood
Alisa Cullison was out walking her dog at 7:30 a.m. Thursday when she said she saw three vehicles 'casing' a section of her north Durham neighborhood. One was a Nissan with tinted windows, another a pickup with Georgia plates. They seemed out of place in Northgate Park, an older middle-class neighborhood of modest homes. Her suspicions were confirmed two hours later, when the vehicles converged on a car with two of her neighbors, both young men from India. It was a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid, said Kelly Morales, a co-director of Siembra NC, an immigrant worker organizing group that has been advising immigrants and others how to respond to federal agents. She, Cullison and others spoke about the incident at a news conference Thursday afternoon. Another neighbor, Emily Ingebretsen, said she saw a dozen men, in tactical gear and wearing masks, exit the vehicles and take the young men along with a third Indian native from their home and drive away. They said little, but one of them wore a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol badge, she said. 'Why are you wearing that mask, I can't see your face, why aren't you identifying yourself?' Ingebretsen said she asked one of them. 'And he said, 'If you were doing something in your community you might want to cover your face too.' To which I said, 'There's nothing that I would do in my community where I would ever hide my identity.'' None of the speakers at the conference would identify the men, saying they were concerned for other family members in the neighborhood. They do not know why the men were arrested, if the officers had a judicial warrant, or where the men were taken, they said. 'We know that the goal of this as Tom Homan and Stephen Miller have both said is to inspire people to self deport by creating an environment of panic and chaos,' said Nikki Marin Baena, Siembra's other co-director. Homan was appointed 'Border Czar' by President Donald Trump and Miller is Trump's homeland security adviser. ICE didn't respond late Thursday afternoon to questions about who the men were, why they were taken into custody and where they were taken. Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams said no authorities provided information to him before or after what happened. 'I'm looking into it,' he said by phone Thursday evening. 'I'm in discovery mode myself right now.' Siembra NC says it has trained more than 400 people to be 'ICE Watch verifiers' in nine counties over the last two months. It has two trainings scheduled in the next two weeks, in Durham on Feb. 22 and in Greensboro on Feb. 27. Trump made illegal immigration a top issue during the campaign and has promised to purge the country of millions of immigrants who are in the U.S. without proper authorization. Critics say the president's plans will lead to overly aggressive tactics across the country that will create fear and chaos in neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. Cullison and Ingebretsen, who have been trained by Siembra, said what they saw Thursday morning made them feel less safe in their neighborhood. 'It does scare me, it felt like those offices were acting outside the bounds of law,' Ingebretsen said. In the Spotlight designates ongoing topics of high interest that are driven by The News & Observer's focus on accountability reporting.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Maryland lawmakers want limits on pricey prescriptions, say health care system is ‘failing us'
BALTIMORE — For most of her life, Erica Miller suffered from a medical condition she didn't know she had. When she finally got a diagnosis and treatment, the cost of her medication varied wildly month-to-month from as low as $45 to as high as $600 — even with insurance. She couldn't afford the care she needed. Maryland lawmakers want to help residents like Miller who battle exorbitant prescription prices, and they are pushing bills in the state House and Senate to limit costs. 'Our health care system is not just broken,' said House Health and Government Operations Vice Chair Bonnie Cullison. 'It's really failing us.' Throughout her life, Miller could not silence the noise in her brain. Miller, a mother and Baltimore resident, has adult ADHD — a diagnosis she didn't receive until she took her son to get tested. As the doctor described the symptoms, she said a 'lightbulb went off.' 'It was a moment that was just kind of an eye-opener,' Miller said. She tried to manage it on her own for a while, but it became difficult. Miller found a therapist and began trying to manage her ADHD with medication. That's when she found Vyvanse, a prescription drug used to treat ADHD and binge-eating disorder. Miller told The Baltimore Sun about when she knew she had finally gotten her dosage right. She said that she cried on the phone to her then-husband, telling him her 'brain is finally quiet.' 'My mind is quiet, and I'm like, 'Is this what it feels like?'' Miller said. 'For anyone who has not experienced or suffered from ADHD, your brain can be very, very busy. For the first time, I didn't experience an 'on' brain.' Miller was now able to focus and advance in her career. But she ran into a snag with the high and inconsistent costs of her prescription. House Bill 424 and Senate Bill 357, sponsored by Cullison, Del. Jennifer White Holland, Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee Chair Brian Feldman and Sen. Dawn Gile, all Democrats, seek to expand the authority of the Maryland Prescription Drug Affordability Board and allow it to set upper payment limits on medications for Marylanders. Cullison said that if the board lowers the cost of prescriptions, commercial market insurance companies would be required to lower premiums or implement different copay or coinsurance structures. Under Maryland law, the Prescription Drug Affordability Board, a five-member independent agency created by the legislature in 2019, can only limit the costs paid by state and local government agencies for prescription medication. It is currently looking at possibly setting upper payment limits for Jardiance and Farxiga, which are used to treat diabetes. Cullison said these two medications represent the 'single biggest cost for state employee health plans.' Between 2020 and 2024, the price of those drugs in the state skyrocketed from $14.5 million to $29.3 million. Cullison said that Maryland has contributed $870 million in research grants to develop both. Dr. Andrew York, the executive director of the Prescription Drug Affordability Board, said cost review studies are currently being performed on six additional drugs. Under the bill, upper payment consideration for the general public would not go into place until the board implements payment limits for purchases through the state and local governments. Drug prices are negotiated between manufacturers and insurance company pharmacy benefit managers. 'Pharmaceutical companies are not regulated in any way except for their product. Their product is regulated, their pricing is not,' said Cullison. 'It was supposed to be managed by competition, but … I don't think competition is working on behalf of the people who need the drugs.' Testifying in opposition to the bill, Kristen Parde, the deputy vice president of state advocacy for PhRMA, said that establishing upper payment limits could disrupt the pharmaceutical supply chain and 'threaten patient access to needed medicines.' '[Upper payment limits] create uncertainty in a complex system, making it harder for providers to secure medications at state-prescribed prices, leading to treatment disruptions, or inability to access medicine for patients,' she said. Patients testified before lawmakers Thursday, asking them to consider what the potential reduced availability of life-saving drugs could mean for them. 'This legislation could make it harder for patients to access the treatments they need to survive and manage diagnoses like breast cancer,' said Marquita Goodluck, a breast cancer survivor. 'While the goal of lowering drug costs is important, the [Prescription Drug Affordability Board] has yet to deliver on this promise.' Former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, vetoed the 2020 bill that was poised to create the funding stream for the Prescription Drug Affordability Board during his second term as governor, citing its cost and the coronavirus pandemic as his reasons to delay its work. Del. Nic Kipke, an Anne Arundel County Republican, said Thursday that he is worried price controls issued by the board could lead to rationed prescriptions or worse products. York called upper payment limits 'a tool in the toolbox,' saying that they are not necessarily the answer for every situation. He said that the first action the board would likely take is to see if it can promote market competition. Cullison said Wednesday that companies have not refused to sell their drugs in other developed countries with regulatory standards, using Germany as an example. Regarding medication pricing, the German federal government functions similarly to the Prescription Drug Affordability Board. There, a group of stakeholders and medical experts negotiate the price with each other and then take their negotiation to drug companies. The results are stark when compared to U.S. prices. In America, Skyrizi, which is used to treat moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, has a wholesale acquisition cost of $21,017. It's $3,711 in Germany. 'The German health care system is not like ours, I'm going to say that out front,' Cullison said. 'But these are the same drugs, being made by the same companies that we're using here in America.' Big price tags on prescriptions have a tangible impact on Marylanders. The high, varying prices of her prescriptions coincided with stressful events in Miller's life. She got divorced and was no longer insured through her ex-husband's health care plan. She was now a single mother, and keeping up with the cost of her medication was becoming untenable. 'Even with a decent job to accommodate for the varying costs, it was still a struggle,' Miller said. 'I have to take the prescription. I'm in executive leadership. I need to be able to make sure that I can function at that level so I can continue to provide for my family.' She said she was having to make decisions between paying rent or paying for her medication. There were a couple of months that she didn't take it. 'The 'quiet' mind went away, and the 'noisy' mind came back, and trying to navigate that along with a divorce — it just became too much,' Miller said. What Miller has experienced is not uncommon. According to Cullison, one in three Marylanders skip doses, ration drugs, or do not pick up prescriptions from the pharmacy because of the costs. There are also racial disparities in access to affordable drugs. According to White Holland, Black and Latino adults over 65 are nearly twice as likely to report difficulty affording medications when compared to white people in the same age bracket. Not taking her prescription began to affect Miller's work performance. She switched to Focalin, a different ADHD medication. The cost was a consistent $90 each month, but she said it doesn't work as effectively for her as Vyvanse did. Miller said she ended up losing her job. She pointed to her inability to manage her ADHD with a drug that worked for her. 'I think a lot of people don't think that being a middle-class corporate professional, that they could be impacted,' said Miller. 'I didn't expect to experience a divorce. I did not expect now, at this point in my life, to be a single mother of two. I didn't expect for this to happen, and now I'm having to juggle financial resources because these pharmaceutical companies want to play Russian roulette with what we can afford.' ----------
