State legislators have proposed and conditionally approved amodel law that would tie reimbursement rates for prepackaged drugsdispensed by physicians for worker's compensation patients to theoriginal manufacturer's average wholesale price.
|A panel of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators(NCOIL) approved the proposed model at its spring meeting inWashington Saturday.
|Some interested parties said the cost of prepackaged drugs couldrange from 10 percent to 90 percent above the cost of buying thedrugs at a pharmacy. One speaker noted, “Is the convenience worththe cost?”
|Rep. Bill Botzow, D-Vt., who chaired the workers' compensationcommittee meeting, said his panel approved the model contingent onamendments that will be introduced at NCOIL's July meeting.
|The model law itself is based on Tennessee's approach, but NCOILwants to incorporate best practices used by other states throughthe planned amendments.
|Rita Nowak, vice president, commercial lines and workerscompensation for the Property Casualty Insurers Association ofAmerica, said, “Let's base what we do on what really works.”
|Eric Goldberg, an assistant vice president at the AmericanInsurance Association, said prepackaged drugs are part of thehealth-cost issue that is a primary driver of the rising costs ofproviding workers' compensation insurance. He welcomed approval ofthe proposed model as an important step.
|An allied issue discussed at the NCOIL meeting is how can NCOILjoin in the effort to control, through a possible model law, thepotential for abuse of opioid drugs that are dispensed to patientsbeing treated through workers' compensation.
|Other issues taken up at the meeting included proposals formodel laws establishing a definition “public employment”communities could use for determining which members of volunteerfire organizations would be eligible for workers' compensationbenefits if injured while not directly involved in an emergencyresponse.
|The model is based on provisions in Vermont law and includes adrafting note identifying various state approaches to fundvolunteer firefighter coverage.
|The panel also took up the issue of how to provide someuniformity to providing workers' comp coverage to agriculturalmigrant workers.
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