For More Information, Contact:

Janet Firshein or Joe Sutherland at 301/652-1558

FOR RELEASE WITH A.M. PAPERS ON

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT PRAISES FLORIDA

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 Florida is a leader in controlling prescription drug costs. The report touts Florida’s multi-dimensional efforts to keep expenses down. It appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

“No one has discovered a silver bullet to staunch the wildly escalating costs of prescription drugs,” says Richard Greene, co-author of the report. “But Florida has tried a variety of approaches, and seems to have moved more quickly with more programs than any other state. It hasn’t been an easy road, of course--and the state has confronted lawsuits by pharmaceutical manufacturers along the way. But there’s no question that many other states have been watching Florida to learn from its efforts.”

Among the various approaches that the Sunshine State has used to come up with some $500 million in savings are a preferred-drug list, data management, use of counterfeit-proof prescription pads, restricting some beneficiaries to just one pharmacy and deals with manufacturers to finance value-added programs for the state.

According to the report, “Pfizer, for example, cut a deal with Florida to put some of its drugs on the [preferred-drug] list in exchange for providing disease-management services for Medicaid patients with congestive heart failure, diabetes, asthma and hypertension. The state expects to save $33 million over the next couple of years from this arrangement.”

The report’s comments about Florida are not all positive, however. The authors take the state to task for freezing enrollment in the Children’s Health Insurance Program. As the authors write, “This avoids hard decisions as to who should be included by simply closing the door on new applicants.”

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.

###