Today, April 22, Virginia’s General Assembly will convene in a one-day special session to vote on legislation returned by the Governor, including the Affordable Medicine Act, a bill with strong bipartisan support that would provide members of the Commonwealth with relief from high prescription drug prices, according to a press release by the nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer health advocacy and policy organization, Families USA.

Ahead of the vote, Families USA and state patient advocacy groups—Freedom Virginia, Maryland Health Care for All, Citizen Action Illinois, and Colorado Consumer Health Initiative—held a press call on April 21. The discussion focused on the significance of state drug pricing reforms and the advancements made by state policymakers to help their constituents access relief from high prescription drug costs.

During the press call, Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, explained that the high cost of healthcare, from skyrocketing premiums to rising prescription drug costs, has reached a breaking point, so much so that 91 percent of American voters believe addressing high healthcare costs is a top issue heading into the midterm elections.

“The Medicare drug price negotiation program is working,” Wright said, “and the savings speak for themselves, but we need to expand these efforts to more drugs for more people.”

The General Assembly in Virginia passed the Affordable Medicine Act with strong bipartisan support and is facing a final vote in the next few weeks, Wright continued. “The bill is a first-of-a-kind model that would automatically extend the Medicare negotiated prices to state-regulated plans, immediately extending lower prices to hundreds of thousands of Virginians, yet Governor Spanberger sent that bill back with suggested amendments that would essentially gut the bill and kill this momentum.”

Wright also highlighted a major win for Maryland: implementing a cap on a diabetes drug. Just a few months ago, Wright said, Colorado was the first state to put a cap on the price of a certain drug.

Rhena Hicks, co-executive director of Freedom Virginia, spoke about the challenges Virginians face in affording medications. “Nearly one in four Virginians skip life-saving medicine because they're not sure if they can afford to refill their prescription.”

“We looked at Maryland, we looked at Colorado, taking lessons learned from across the country, and we asked ourselves a simple question: Why build something from scratch when the federal government has already done the hard work,” Hicks explained when talking about the Affordable Medicine Act. “On the first 10 Medicare negotiated prices, they were negotiated anywhere between 38 percent and 79 percent lower than list prices, which went into effect for Medicare enrollees on January 1. And we decided Virginia should just pull those prices down for our people, too, even off Medicare.”

“Across the nation,” Hicks added, “Medicare recipients have already seen $1.5 billion in savings from those first 10 maximum fair prices, and we want Virginians to share in those savings, not just our seniors, but our working families, state workers, and people buying insurance on the marketplace.”

Vincent DeMarco, president of Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative, shared that in 2019, Maryland became the first state to establish a prescription drug affordability board. Last week, the board set an upper payment limit for the drug Jardiance for state and local governments. The limit will take effect on January 1, 2027, and is projected to save at least $320,000 per year for state and local governments statewide.

Anusha Thotakura, executive director of Citizen Action Illinois, shared that a 2024 poll found that over 77 percent of Illinoisans are concerned about the affordability of prescription medications. “We have recently passed historic legislation to make healthcare more affordable, from establishing rate review for health insurance to cracking down on PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) practices like spread, pricing, and steering, but the legislature has not yet taken real action to address high drug costs.”

Priya Telang, communications manager at the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative (CCHI), said that Colorado plans to proceed with the upper payment limit process for two additional drugs this year. Telang emphasized the importance of states taking action to reduce the burden of high drug costs on patients and the potential for significant savings.