Evers to include insulin copay caps, creation of Drug Affordability Review Board in biennial budget proposal

Gov. Tony Evers will use his 2021-23 budget proposal to again push for making prescription drugs more affordable for Wisconsinites. 

His plan, announced Wednesday, includes capping the copay on insulin, increasing funding for free clinics and creating a Drug Affordability Review Board, which would set price limits on prescription drugs. 

"No Wisconsinite should have to choose between paying their bills and affording their prescription medication,” Evers said in a news release. “Healthcare — medications or otherwise — shouldn’t be a privilege afforded only to the healthy and wealthy, and that's why we are going to be tackling this issue head-on in our budget.” 

The proposals build on ideas from the Governor's Task Force on Reducing Prescription Drug Prices, which Evers established in 2019 to address climbing drug prices. 

Among measures Evers' budget would include: 

• Create a Prescription Drug Affordability Review Board to establish prescription drug spending targets for public sector entities and establish price limits.
• Create a program that would allow the state to import drugs and create savings for consumers and taxpayers. 
• Create the Office of Prescription Drug Affordability to oversee and regulate the pharmaceutical supply chain and serve as a watchdog for consumers.
• Establish a $50 copay cap on insulin.
• Create a program to ensure people never need to ration insulin. 
• Increase funding for free and charitable clinics by $4 million over the biennium.
• Eliminate BadgerCare prescription drug copayments and make the prescription drug benefit more accessible.

No cost estimate was included in Evers' announcement. 

Evers is set to deliver his budget proposal on Feb. 16, and after that, the measures will have to make their way through the Republican-led legislature.

Evers also plans to include other measures in his budget, he said during his annual State of the State address in January, including modernizing the state's unemployment system and broadband access. Evers has dubbed 2021 the "Year of Broadband Access" and plans to include $200 million in funding to expand access to broadband internet across the state. 

But Evers' budget is coming at a time when he and the GOP-led Legislature have continued to butt heads, including over the governor's statewide mask mandate. 

In a joint letter Tuesday, Senate Chair Howard Marklein of Spring Green and Assembly Chair Mark Born of Beaver Dam asked Evers to think about the impact of the budget on taxpayers. 

"Do not send the legislature another budget like your first budget that was full of tax increases, excessive spending and divisive non-fiscal policy," they wrote in the letter. "Our citizens deserve better."

The letter highlighted displeasure over Evers' last budget, which called for $1 billion in tax increases and an increase in state spending by 8%. 

Marklein declined to comment on Evers' new proposal, and Born's office did not respond to a request. 

Evers proposed measures related to prescription drugs as a part of the 2019-`21 budget, one of which would have helped to control the price of prescription drugs and would require manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers who manage prescription drug benefits for health plans, health insurers and hospitals to give the state information on what they pay for prescription drugs.

The other was to allow the Department of Health Services to import generic prescription drugs if they had fewer than four domestic competitors.

Those provisions did not make it into the final budget, which was signed by Evers in July 2019 and included a series of 78 vetoes of changes made by lawmakers. Those vetoes steered an additional $65 million toward schools, canceled plans for a new prison and restored state funding for Milwaukee's child welfare system, among others.

Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on Twitter at @SchulteLaura.