Florida Legislature Committees Approve Generic Drug Bill, Scaled Back Long Term Care Bill

Overcoming the "last major obstacle" in the three-year debate over generic drugs, the Florida Senate's Appropriations Committee voted 14-7 to approve a bill (S 342) that would allow consumers to purchase generic versions of six common prescription drugs currently restricted under state law, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. The six drugs now are included in the state's "negative formulary," a list of brand-name medications that consumers cannot substitute with generic versions without written approval from a doctor. But the bill would remove the drugs -- warfarin, digoxin, phenytoin, chloropromazine, theophylline and quininidine glucomate -- from the list and would allow pharmacists to automatically offer consumers the generic version unless a doctor deems the brand-name version "medically necessary" (LeMendola, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 4/25). The makers of the brand-name drugs had said that the generic versions were "not the same," but the FDA has determined that the generic and brand-name versions are "therapeutically equivalent" (Kam, AP/Florida Times-Union, 4/24). The House already has approved the bill, which now moves to the full Senate, where it will likely pass (South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 4/25).

Cutting Back Long Term Care Bill
In other Florida health news, the state House Fiscal Responsibility Council on April 24 voted 19-2 on a "mammoth" long term care bill (HB 1879), after "stripp[ing]" $83 million for patient care and approving "new roadblocks to keep juries from punishing bad nursing homes with big-money damage awards," the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. The committee's Republican leaders scaled the bill back from $130 million to $47 million, cutting money "that had been reserved to improve wages and benefits" of long term care employees. The approved bill also scaled back from 2.9 hours to 2.6 hours the amount of time per day each nursing home resident must receive. The cutbacks were "necessary to balance the state budget," State Rep. Jerry Maygarden (R) said (Hollis, South Florida Sun Sentinel, 4/25). Bob Jackson, a lobbyist for the AARP of Florida, told lawmakers that the version they approved "won't help ... stem the flood of abuse lawsuits against nursing homes or restore the availability of affordable insurance for the industry" (AP/Florida Times-Union, 4/25).