Nevada’s Drug Price Transparency Bill Up for Permanent Funding

CARSON CITY, NV, United States – This week, Nevada’s Senate Finance Committee considered a $780,000 fiscal note from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to fund a measure under SB380 that aims to transfer the existing state drug pricing database to the Enterprise Information Technology Services Division, where it would be managed by a pharmacist, with support from a management analyst.

Expanding on two bills from 2017 and 2019 that targeted price increase for diabetes and asthma drugs, respectively, SB380 would require manufacturers of all drugs, regardless of the disease they target, that exceed a $40 list prices for a course of therapy and saw a 10% increase during the previous calendar year to report certain costs and profits associated with the production of the drugs.

Further, for drugs with a list price exceeding $40 for a course of therapy, the bill would have prescription drug wholesalers report to the state minimum and maximum list prices of the drug over the last year and the aggregate amount of rebates negotiated with drug companies, manufacturers, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

The Finance Committee and HHS considered using penalties and fees collected from the diabetes and asthma programs when companies failed to meet reporting requirements; however, these funds were initially planned to go toward diabetes and asthma education programs. For SB380 sponsor Senator Julia Ratti, the use of these penalties and fees to fund management of the transparency database is a good start, but a more concrete solution is necessary.

Ratti commented, “The Department of Health and Human Services has been doing yeoman’s work to fulfill the NRS around transparency reporting…but the resources haven’t necessarily been there to do the robust analysis and the robust reporting with the data we have available. With this bill, we requested the unsolicited fiscal note to really look at, what would it cost to implement our drug transparency program in a sustainable way where we’re not taking a little bit of somebody’s time over here and a little bit of somebody’s time over there.”