Gov. Maura Healey seems to be of two minds when it comes to helping Bay Staters deal with rising costs.
On the one hand, she is on Team Constituent in calling on the Department of Public Utilities to take immediate action to bring energy prices down.
On the other, she is on Team Tax-‘Em in proposing to reinstitute a long-dormant tax on prescription drugs as part of her FY26 spending plan.
A “pharmacy assessment” on all prescription drugs sold here would see pharmacies charged 6% per prescription or $2 per, whichever is less.
Guess who would wind up bearing that burden?
The plan, according to the Mass Fiscal Alliance, would result in higher costs for patients, at a time when they’re already paying too much for everything else. Like the natural gas bills Healey is trying to lower.
“Governor Maura Healey’s proposal, to increase costs for prescription drugs, is absolutely ‘ill’ advised. Healthcare costs in Massachusetts are already high enough, the Governor wants to make it even worse,” Mass Fiscal spokesman Paul Craney told the Herald.
Though the budget proposes that the fee paid for by the pharmacies, Craney said in practice each $2 charge will come out of a consumer’s pocket, not the business owners’ bottom line.
“The Governor’s assessment cost will be passed onto the customers. Healey’s priorities are not in line with Massachusetts residents,” Craney said.
According to information provided by Healey’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the $2 per prescription charge could generate up to $145 million in fees from pharmacies each year. At the same time, the Healey Administration doesn’t expect patients to see any financial impact from the plan, because prescription copays are set by insurers, not the pharmacists.
But not all prescriptions are covered by insurers, co-pays or not. Other plans have patients pay until a deductible is reached before a co-pay kicks in. An excise tax or fee or whatever it’s called will be felt by those who pay the bills.
The Healey Administration says the money raised will go to fund MassHealth, and will be used to help prevent pharmacy closures in low-income neighborhoods, where people are more likely to be enrolled in a MassHealth program. A noble thought, but since one reason for pharmacy closures has been lower reimbursement rates for dispensing prescriptions, an excise tax would seem to be a burden, not a blessing.
This has been tried before, when a plan to charge $1.30 per prescription went into effect in 2003. It was overturned, but state budget writers tried to add it back in via the FY04 spending plan.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney nixed it, saying in a press release that the plan would have “renewed the ill-conceived $1.30 pharmacy tax levied on every prescription filled, which has a disproportionate impact on senior citizens and others who live on fixed incomes. ”
Romney was right.
Healey should be as concerned for those who have to pay for prescriptions as she is for ratepayers.
“People did not plan for these extraordinary utility rate increases, and they can only do so much to stretch a budget. The DPU must act immediately to provide rate relief to customers in this heating season,” Healey said in a letter sent Sunday to DPU Chair Jamie Van Nostrand.
There’s no wiggle room in those stretched budgets for prescription fees, either.
