House Bill H0176

2015 Freedom Index Score: (-1)

Analyst: Parrish Miller
Date of analysis: February 22, 2015

ANALYST'S NOTE: House Bill 176 puts new requirements on insurers offering health care policies that
provide coverage for prescription drugs. Rather than allowing the market and the agreements between
insurers and customers to guide these decisions, the government is imposing additional mandates and
regulations into the process.

Point No.3 Does it give government any new, additional, or expanded power to prohibit, restrict, or
regulate activities in the free market? Conversely, does it eliminate or reduce government intervention in
the market?
ANALYSIS: House Bill 176 creates Section 41-1852, Idaho Code, to mandate that "an insurer
offering a health care policy that provides coverage for prescription drugs in this state:
(a) Shall permit and apply a prorated daily cost-sharing rate to prescriptions that are
dispensed by a network pharmacy for less than a thirty (30) days' supply if the
prescriber or pharmacist indicates the fill or refill could be in the best interest of the
patient or is for the purpose of synchronizing the patient's chronic medications;
(b) Shall not deny coverage for the dispensing of any drug prescribed for the treatment of a
chronic illness that is made in accordance with a plan among the insured, a practitioner
and a pharmacist to synchronize the refilling of multiple prescriptions for the insured;
and
(c) Shall not use payment structures incorporating prorated dispensing fees determined by
calculation of the days' supply of medication dispensed. Dispensing fees shall be
determined exclusively on the total number of prescriptions dispensed." (-1)