Legislative update: 2019 Week 1
Georgia’s 2019 legislative session opened Monday, January 14, and GPhA was there. As we do every year, GPhA will be in attendance at the Gold Dome daily, monitoring legislation and meeting with legislators and other stakeholders to help ensure that Georgia pharmacists have a voice on all issues impacting the practice of pharmacy in the state. And as we do every year, we’ll provide weekly updates on bills we are watching, and, from time to time, issuing legislative alerts and asking you to take action.
While legislative days 1 through 4 were light on legislation introduced, it proved be a busy week for all involved.
Georgia’s new governor, Brian Kemp, was sworn into office along with the new Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan and more than 38 new state legislators. Committee assignments were announced with one noteworthy change in the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, with Senator Ben Watson named as the new chairman.
We look forward to working with Senator Watson in his new capacity. Former chair Renee Unterman remains an HHS committee member and so we also look forward to continuing to work with her — and we thank her for all of the work she did as chairman of HHS on behalf of Georgia’s citizens, pharmacists, and their patients.
Legislative plans
This year, our focus continues to be our patients and addressing practices that adversely impact the care that they receive. More specifically, GPhA plans to engage with the General Assembly in an effort to address the fast-growing practice of PBM patient steering — a practice that has resulted in many of Georgia’s sickest and chronically ill patients being forced from pharmacies of their choice into PBM-owned mail order and retail pharmacies.
Patient steering not only severs the relationship that pharmacists have with long-time patients, but it also jeopardizes patient care. Clinical outcomes are at risk when patients are forced to use multiple pharmacies; decreased face to face contact not only means less monitoring of patients by a healthcare professional, it can easily lead to an increased risk of medication interactions and even delay in treatment.
We look forwarding to addressing this issue and doing so with new allies who are willing to fight for Georgia’s patients.
Pharmacists at the Capitol
While GPhA is at the Capitol daily advocating for pharmacists and their patients, the true voice and the true strength of the association lies with you, our members. That is why is so important that your legislators hear from you, their constituents, on issues that impact pharmacy.
With GPhA’s legislative priorities soon to be introduced, it is critical that our member pharmacists continue to participate in GPhA’s Pharmacists at the Capitol events. Stay tuned as we will be releasing our first dates soon.
Week 1 Legislation
Week 1 was a light week in terms of legislation introduced that will impact the practice of pharmacy but rest assured, that will change soon enough. To that end, GPhA has already engaged with several different legislators and stake holders regarding likely legislation which may impact pharmacy.
