This webinar is being recorded and summarized.

Good morning.

This is the council's monthly meeting for March.

The proceeding this morning is a hybrid meeting, which is being held in person and via WebEx Teleconference.

It's also available to the public via video stream online at the county council website.

This time I'm going to do a roll call of our council members.

Ms.

Walsh?

Here.

Ms.

Young.

Here.

And Mr.

Youngman and Dr.

Jones are not with us.

And I am Vice Chair Rick B.

We're going to begin today with a discussion about Maryland's prescription drug affordability board.

So thank you, guests.

Please introduce yourselves for the folks online, and we may begin.

Perfect.

My name is Andrew York, and I'm the executive director of the Maryland Prescription Drug Affordability Board, and I will be speaking in just a moment.

Good morning.

My name is Benny DeMarco.

I'm the uh president of the Maryland Health Care for All Coalition.

Um if it's okay, Madam Vice Chair will start.

Well, thank you very much for this opportunity.

Uh I'm a big fan of Howard County.

Got a lot of wonderful friends here, and I want to thank Councilwoman Walsh and Councilwoman Young for hosting uh us to be here and the vice chair for letting us speak.

Um we really appreciate this.

Uh we are uh Maryland's premier healthcare advocacy organization.

We've ran since 1999, and we have three goals, which are set out in this document.

I gave you one is to achieve quality affordable health care for all Marylanders, and thanks to the leadership of a lot of folks in Howard County and elsewhere.

We've gone from 13% uninsured to 6%.

That's under attack now, but we're fighting back, and we're we're gonna keep going in Maryland forward to reach 0% uninsured.

Another one of our goals is health equity, and we've worked to create health equity resource communities across the state to reduce health uh disparities.

That's been very successful, also.

But we're here today to talk about our third main goal is to make health care more affordable.

And what we've concluded is that one of the number one ways to do that is by making high-cost drugs uh more affordable.

The simple matter is drugs don't work if people can't afford them.

And we know that 30 to 40 percent of Marylanders actually can't afford the drugs they need, either can't pick them up at the counter or have to cut out other food, other necessities to afford their drugs.

That is unconscionable, can't continue.

Also, all of us suffer because of our insurance companies have to pay so much for the prescription drugs that our premiums are higher.

Blue Cross Book Shield says that one-third of their premium costs are high-cost drugs.

That is a burden on all of us.

And third, state and local governments pay high amounts for these prescription drugs.

Your your neighbor uh county executive uh Stuart Pittman says that in in that and in Reno County, they spend more on uh prescription drugs for employees of the county than on libraries.

That really is unconscionable.

So that's why in 2019 we led the effort.

Uh Stuart Pittman, County Executive Anne Reno County says that in Anne Runnel County, they spend more on the cost of prescription drugs for their employees than on libraries, and that is really unconscionable.

Um for those reasons, we fought very hard for the creation of the nation's first prescription drug affordability board.

And we want to big shout out to your county executive Calvin Ball, who is one of our leaders in getting that done along with Stuart Pittman and uh uh uh Mark Elleric from Montgomery County and so many others, the county leaders played a big role in getting this law enacted.

So I said in 2019, we enacted the first prescription drug affordability board law, and we wanted the board then to have the authority to make high-cost drugs more affordable for everyone.

The legislature wasn't ready to do that.

They gave the board the authority to make high-cost drugs more affordable for state and local governments, and we were gonna go back.

Our our mission was to come back and give broaden that authority.

We had hoped to do that in 2023, but former Governor Hogan put a lot of roadblocks in the way, and including vetoing a key bill to make give the board the authority to raise assessments to fund their work, which was overridden, but that took time and in other ways, slow walking things, that was a problem.

But luckily, Governor Westmore came into the office, committed to the board, gave the board the money it needed, and um, and then in 2025, uh delegate Bonnie Cullison and Senator Don Gile put in a bill which Governor Moore signed that will expand the board's authority once they've taken action on state and local governments.

The way the law is written one year after the board sets what we call upper payment limits for state and local governments.

As Andy's going to talk about, we're very excited about the board is close to doing that on a couple of uh of high cost drugs, which will directly make these drugs more affordable for your state and local governments, and then one year uh for everyone.

This is very, very exciting.