Attorney General Peter F. Neronha on May 28 announced a package of legislative proposals and other initiatives to help the state’s ailing primary care providers.
Among the initiatives is a lawsuit he’s filed against the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers – CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and Optum – and their affiliated group purchasing organizations. The complaint alleges the PBMs and the group purchasing organizations deceptively brand themselves as helping customers save money, when they profit directly from cost increases.
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Neronha also called for creation of a new state agency focused on collecting and analyzing health care data and announced a collaboration between his office and the Brown University School of Public Health’s Center for Advancing Health Policy Through Research. The collaboration would look into potential policy options for state-based health system reform.
His legislative proposals include immediately raising Medicaid payments to primary care providers to be 100% on par with Medicare rates.
Neronha criticized as “half-baked” proposals unveiled in April by Gov. Daniel J. McKee that included: accelerating a primary care Medicaid rate review; requiring commercial health insurers to increase funding for primary care reimbursements; reducing red tape by easing prior authorization requirements; providing grants to help primary care practices serve additional patients and hire new providers; strengthening fiscal oversight of the state’s health care system; and expanding the primary care student loan forgiveness program.
The General Assembly is in the homestretch of a legislative session that normally ends soon after the next fiscal year’s budget is passed in mid-to-late June.
