Each senator in the Nebraska Legislature has a chance to influence the debate in the legislative session because each is able to choose a priority bill.
A priority bill is generally considered ahead of the other bills in debate. This is important because each session has a limited number of days, and priority bills grant every senator the opportunity to make sure that a bill of their choosing gets discussed.
Sen. Mark Kolterman of District 24, which includes the counties of Seward, York and parts of Polk and Butler, declared his priority bill is to Adopt the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Licensure and Regulation Act, LB767.
Pharmacy benefit managers, who serve as intermediaries between prescription drug plans and the pharmacies that beneficiaries use, have never been regulated in Nebraska. Nebraska is the 35th state in the nation to regulate them, Kolterman said.
“[PBMs] made a lot of money, millions of dollars in money over the years, because they haven’t been regulated,” he said. “I’m not a person to want to regulate, but, because they weren’t regulated, they weren’t passing those savings on to consumers like I felt they should.”
The bill regulates actions such as how audits can be carried out, how pricing can be set and whether PBMs should tell consumers how much the drug actually costs and what they are paying for it. Kolterman said these regulations would help protect local pharmacies and keep them in business.
“If we don’t regulate [PBMs], the next thing you know we’re going to have these small town pharmacies like Pac ‘N’ Save in Seward or Mueri Drug or the hospital pharmacy, they’re going to have a hard time surviving, because their margins are so thin,” he said. “This should help them. It gives them a leg up and puts them on a more equal playing field.”
Kolterman involved multiple parties when crafting the bill.
“We worked all summer with all the parties involved, and what we did was we brought them all to the table and we talked about our differences, what we could agree to, what we couldn’t agree to,” he said.
No one testified against LB767, and it was passed on final reading in a 48-0-1 vote March 11. It was approved by the governor March 16.
