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FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT PRAISES WASHINGTON STATE’S

EFFORTS TO CONTROL DRUG COSTS

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, cites programs in Washington and several other Northwestern states for utilizing an intense “evidence-based” approach to controlling drug costs. The report touts Washington’s reliance on solid research to ensure drugs with long-term benefits are not kept off preferred-drug lists because of price. The article appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

“All states have had to take steps to control huge increases in their pharmacy bills,” says Richard Greene, co-author of the report. “The development of preferred-drug lists has been controversial, but Washington has been particularly careful in making sure that its decisions are well grounded in science.” Washington, along with Oregon and Idaho, has contracted with the Oregon Health and Sciences University to help guide decisions on pharmaceutical use.

Washington also was praised by the report’s authors for keeping its public health programs on track with a bi-annual plan that sets out standards, recommendations and strategies in seven key areas of public health. In this critical field, many other states are suffering from poor planning, with major workforce shortages and program cutbacks.

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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