Virginia General Assembly: Governor McDonnell Approves Pharmacy Items in Budget

Today, Governor McDonnell's amendments to the 2012-14 state budget were released to the public.  VPhA is pleased to report that the pharmacy items that were passed by the General Assembly remain standing following the Governor's amendments.  Those items are:

• Transparency requirement for future contract administration of the State Employee health insurance program
• Prohibits the establishment of a retail maintenance network for maintenance drugs for the State Employee health insurance program 
• Creation of a Medication Therapy Management pilot program for the State Employee health insurance program  

Of note, there was an amendment introduced by Governor McDonnell in the Transparency language that clarified how pharmaceutical rebates are reported.  We expect the General Assembly to pass this amendment.  VPhA would like to point out that in the "Explanation" section of this amendment, the following comment was made: "the financial information that will be collected will be extremely beneficial to the Commonwealth."

The Governor also introduced two additional amendments relating to pharmacy.  They are: 

• Restoring funding for the Pharmacy Connection program
• Pharmacy Connect provides access to free prescription drugs, for adults without drug coverage, from participating pharmaceutical companies in Southwest Virginia
• Adds behavioral health drugs to the Medicaid Preferred Drug List (PDL)
• Behavioral health drugs were scheduled to be added to the Medicaid PDL in fiscal year 2014.  This amendment adds those drugs to the PDF one year early starting in 2013 

The General Assembly will now come back into session on Monday, May 14th to review and accept or reject amendments proposed by the Governor.  As stated above, VPhA is expecting that these amendments will pass the General Assembly and we will let you know the final vote on May 14th.