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FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT PRAISES DELAWARE

FOR HELPING KEEP PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICES DOWN

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, finds that Delaware is a pioneer in controlling prescription drug costs. The report touts Delaware’s efforts to use bulk purchasing of drugs as a means to keep expenses down. It appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

“While there’s no question that prescription drugs can potentially keep health care costs down over the long term--by avoiding more expensive and potentially invasive procedures down the road--their rising costs has made it extremely difficult for states to keep any kind of control on health care costs,” says Richard Greene, co-author of the report. “Delaware was one of the first states to jump in and try to control those expenses.”

The Delaware plan has involved combining the drug needs of its Medicaid patients and state employees. The two groups combined add up to about one-third of the entire pharmaceutical market in the state. As the report says, “When Delaware decided to negotiate with pharmacies in the state on behalf of both of those groups combined, it was able to get dramatically better prices. The savings so far have amounted to $3.5 million.”

The report also lauded Delaware for a “long-standing commitment to confronting the problem of the uninsured.” The state has achieved the second-lowest uninsured adult rates in the United States, in large part thanks to consistent attention to the problem by the 14-year-old Delaware Health Care Commission.

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ health care system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded--it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis. It is a fiscal crisis.”

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29. Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

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