DENVER - Ignoring all empirical evidence indicating that price setting fails as a government policy, the Colorado State Senate gave their final approval on
House Bill 23-1225, expanding the Prescription Drug Affordability Board’s lifespan and powers.
Upon passage, Advance Colorado’s President, Michael Fields, issued the following statement:
“Price setting fails. Period. Having an unelected board arbitrarily set prices on prescription drugs creates market distortions that could have devastating effects on availability and access. Unexplainably, despite the Prescription Drug Affordability Board not acting to set prices on a single drug it currently has jurisdiction over, the legislature has moved forward with expanding its scope and extending its lifespan. We urge the Governor to veto this bill, not just because price setting is a failed policy, but because expanding an unproven experiment is bad practice.”The Prescription Drug Affordability Board was established in 2021 with Senate Bill 21-175. Since then, over $1.3 million has been spent on the board and it has set the price of zero prescription drugs thus far. HB23-1225 will extend the board’s original five-year sunset term to ten years with an estimated cost of nearly $5 million to taxpayers.
The bill now heads to Governor Jared Polis.
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