On the day after the November election, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signaled he would take a bipartisan approach to the upcoming legislative session. The governor said that voters “expect us to find common ground” on issues such as “reining in the cost of living.”
As a group of both Democratic and Republican legislators, we could not agree more. With a divided legislature, we should make it a top priority to pass bipartisan legislation that makes life more affordable for Virginians. That’s why we are introducing a commonsense proposal in the 2024 legislative session to rein in the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs.
Our legislation would create a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, an independent group of health experts that evaluates the prices of certain high-cost prescription drugs and sets reasonable out-of-pocket caps on what consumers will pay for a given medication. PDABs are a critical check against price-gouging pharmaceutical companies who would otherwise charge whatever they want. PDABs have been established in both Republican and Democratic administrations across eight states, including Minnesota and Colorado.
From Galax to Fairfax, our constituents are demanding action on soaring prescription drug costs. For many Virginians, having access to medication is not just about the “cost of living,” it’s about the cost of staying alive.
Although we caucus with different parties and represent different regions of the Commonwealth, all of the people we represent, whether Democrats or Republicans, want us to address the increasingly unaffordable cost of medicine in Virginia. A recent poll from AARP found three-quarters of Virginia voters want their legislators to pass a PDAB, including 85% of Democrats, 71% of Republicans and 70% of Independents. A 2022 Mason-Dixon poll showed similar support for the proposal in the six regions of the commonwealth. In today’s divided partisan atmosphere, there are very few issues with such high support across party lines.
When it comes to making our commonwealth more affordable, taking on Big Pharma is one of the most impactful places we can start. Over the last decade, Virginians have been shouldering a greater burden of prescription drug costs than most Americans. A majority of Virginians have personally felt the negative effects of the rising cost of medicine. In fact, Virginians are being hit even harder than people in other states; in 2020, our residents spent 36% more per person on prescription drugs than the national average. And 35% of Virginians report not filling their medications as prescribed.
The PDAB effort attracted a broad coalition of enthusiasm in 2023, when a bill passed the Virginia Senate with bipartisan support and earned the backing of an ideologically diverse range of advocates, including AARP Virginia, the Virginia Catholic Conference, the Virginia Association of Counties and the Commonwealth Council on Aging. Unfortunately, the bill was killed by a small House subcommittee in a meeting held at dawn. The majority of our House colleagues did not even have an opportunity to vote on it.
Seniors and hardworking families can’t afford to let this bill die again. That includes Virginians like Jillian Goodwin in Norfolk who takes more than 15 different medications a day which can cost tens of thousands of dollars a month. A PDAB would change her life and simply make it affordable to stay alive.
Jillian isn’t the only one; Mara Shapiro in Charlottesville who lives with Crohn’s and Addison’s disease, Del. Delaney’s daughter Kaitlyn in Fairfax who has type 1 diabetes, and other Virginians across the commonwealth need us to step up and face this issue head on.
We agree with Gov. Youngkin that it’s time to find “common ground” to rein in the cost of living — and the cost of staying alive. We hope he will join us in asking every member of the General Assembly to vote to lower the cost of living by establishing a Prescription Drug Affordability Board.
The writers are members of the General Assembly. Deeds is a Democratic state senator from Charlottesville. Stanley is a Republican state senator from Franklin County. Delaney is a Democratic member of the House of Delegates from Fairfax County.
