PATIENTS NEED LOWER DRUG PRICES – NOT POLICIES THAT WOULD MEAN FEWER PHARMACIES 

Quick Context

With our rural hospitals already under threat, Tennessee has now passed a bill — SB 2040/HB 1959 — that would risk forcing some types of pharmacies to close, too. But that same bill would do nothing to lower drug prices. So patients still face unaffordable insulin, cancer drugs, and specialty medications.

The legislation now on the governor’s desk would raise patients’ real costs: we keep paying manufacturers’ monopoly prices PLUS new transportation costs, time costs, and health costs from reduced access. The governor’s own state officials testified it will cost Tennessee taxpayers $91.6 million per year — not to improve access, but to reduce it.

If signed into law, SB 2040 would also put multiple types of pharmacies at risk — retail locations, mail-order services, and specialty pharmacies. That means, for example:

• Rural patients in Tennessee could lose both local pharmacies AND mail-order alternatives, and
• Limited mobility patients could lose home delivery options

In other words, this bill hurts our people most: uninsured, underinsured, rural, elderly, and disabled patients. We are exactly the Tennesseans who most need lower drug prices, but we stand to lose accessible pharmacy care while drug prices stay high. This is not a commonsense solution.

Governor Lee has ten days to act. He can veto this bill — and we’re asking him to do exactly that. View ADLP’s veto request to the governor here.