Blog - Childrens Hospital Law Nears the Finish Line

Statement

Blog - Childrens Hospital Law Nears the Finish Line

By Paul Gillmor

Last night, I received a phone call from Rob Portman, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to tell me that the law I sponsored allowing children's hospitals to receive discount prescription drugs was in the final stages of being implemented. Although the bill moved through Congress and to the President's desk in only four months, it has taken seventeen months for the Department of Health and Human Services to implement the law.

The wheels of government may be rusty, but it is good to see they are still turning. After Congress quickly passed the discount prescription drug law which I authored, I sent three letters to the Department of Health and Human Services requesting that the program be implemented. After calling Budget Director Rob Portman at the White House last week, I am happy to report that our children's hospitals are in the final stages of receiving their discount prescription drugs.

By law, the comment period for the proposed guidelines of Gillmor's law is open until September 7, 2007. After that time, the Health Resources and Services Administration will issue final guidelines. However, once the law is fully implemented, children's hospitals will be eligible for drug pricing discounts into the future as well as retroactively from February 8, 2006. Ohio has children's hospitals in Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo.

The law will correct a glitch which was excluding our children's hospital and Ohio's Medicaid system from millions of dollars in savings every year. Under the old law, only hospitals providing prescriptions to Americans over 65 years of age were eligible for discounted medications.

As a result of this law, the approximately 75 children's hospitals across the United States and 6 in Ohio may see average annual savings of more than $2 million each. This amount is equivalent to hiring 32 more full time employees in each hospital. In addition, state Medicaid systems will benefit from nearly $300,000 in annual savings per hospital in the state. These savings will help keep outpatient care affordable and allow our children's hospitals to continue providing their invaluable services to Ohio's 3 million children. Most importantly, these savings can be provided to the hospitals and the state, without any cost to the government, and without risking patient care.

Source