2020 Legislative Update: Week 9

Week 9 of Georgia’s legislative session was both busy and filled with uncertainty as the General Assembly looked to navigate not only crossover day but also how to proceed in light of CoviD-19. Crossover day is the last day a bill may crossover from its originating chamber and so if a bill does not crossover it is no longer viable that session though its contents may be subsequently added to a viable bill. Crossover day was March 12 and the General Assembly worked deep into the night to get bills out of their originating chambers.

For GPhA, several key bills had already crossed over which made crossover day somewhat less stressful. Those bills are:

In addition, several other bills GPhA is monitoring made crossover while others did not. Set forth below is a breakdown of those bills.

Last week the General Assembly made the decision to suspend the legislative session until further notice due to CoviD-19 concerns. The session will reconvene, and the hope is that when it does the body will continue to work on moving legislation forward in the remaining days of the session. The General Assembly also passed the midyear budget via HB 792 which, amongst other things, contained $175,000 for DCH to conduct an actuarial study on the fiscal impact of carving Rx benefits from Medicaid managed care. In a year with much belt tightening and several distracting factors, getting this money appropriated is a significant step forward for assessing the potential savings the state may achieve via a Medicaid managed care Rx carve out and for transparency.

GPhA monitored bills that made crossover

GPhA monitored bills that did not make crossover