Rogers / 4 Senator A.

Lee

S.B._____B

A BILL
To make prescription drugs more easily accessible for health care patients.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This act may be cited as the The Accessible Pharmaceuticals Act of 2016.
SECTION 2. FINDINGS
Congress hereby finds and declares that,
1) In the year of 2014, the prices for prescription drugs rose 13%.
2) A survey showed that 77% of people believe that making costly drugs for chronic conditions less expensive
should be the President and Congresss main priority when considering health care.
3) When averaged out, the amount of money spent on prescription drugs would equal $1000 spent per person.
4) As the number one spender on prescription drugs, the United States spends about 40% more than the next leading
country, Canada.
5) Those healthcare patients who choose the lower-priced health care plan will most likely pay 34% more for
prescription drugs than they did when they were not on a healthcare plan.
6) It is required by the Affordable Care Act that insurance plans cover a minimum of one drug in the list of officially
approved medicines.
7) More than half of the Americans in a poll believed that too much money is spent on advertising prescription drugs
to patients rather than on research.
8) There are 3.2 million Americans who have been diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C, and the prescription drugs
used to help with symptoms of this disease cost $84,000, averaging out to $1,000 per pill.
9) A third of United States citizens are paying about $40 more for their prescription drugs through the Affordable
Care Act.
10) In every new drug that they invest, pharmaceutical companies spend $2.6 billion, meaning that they price their
medications higher to make up for losses in drugs that dont make it to market.
11) In the United States, almost 70% of American citizens take at least one prescription drug, while over 50% are
prescribed at least two.
12) In the year of 2015, total expenditure on medicines reached $310 billion in the United States.
13) Pharmaceutical companies spend $24 billion just on marketing to doctors.
SECTION 3. STATUTORY LANGUAGE
A) The Accessible Pharmaceuticals Act of 2017 shall mandate that all health insurance plan providers utilize a tiered
pharmaceutical drug system. This system shall involve a minimum of 6 tiers with the tiers as follows: low cost
generic, preferred generic, generic, preferred brand name, brand name, and specialty. Said tiers will divide
prescription drugs prescribed to patients into categories that set each drugs copay to a specific price for each tier.
Generic prescription drugs refer to copies of brand-name drugs that are sold at discounted prices because their patent
has expired for the original brand-name drug. Brand-name prescription drugs include those that have a name
belonging to a specific company or brand-name. Specialty drugs are pharmaceuticals that are higher-priced for their
use in treating more complex conditions. Pharmaceutical companies shall hereby reduce their expenditure on
advertising products by 25% of the average amount spent in the last five years. This act shall hereby enforce action
of a Pharmaceuticals Price Review Board that will monitor the prices of prescription drugs.
B) This law shall be enforced by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Insurance.
C) All health insurance plan providers that have not enforced the above mandate involving drug tiers within the first
year of enactment shall pay a fine of 10% of their profit on pharmaceuticals prescribed to health care patients. Those
pharmaceutical companies that fail to reduce their expenditure to the 75% will also be fined 10% of the amount of
money that they earn by selling their products to health insurance plan providers. This bill shall be enacted on
January 1, 2018.