Trenton, January 21, 2025 ― Chrissy Buteas, President and Chief Executive Officer of the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey, released the following statement concerning comments HINJ submitted to the NJ Division of Consumer Affairs’ concerning its proposed rules currently in effect and being considered for formal adoption relating to prescription drug price transparency and the New Jersey Prescription Drug Affordability Council:
“Lowering health care costs is a universally shared goal. There are smart and efficient ideas that can immediately lower costs for patients without jeopardizing New Jersey’s global leadership in medical innovation or harming New Jersey’s 369,000 life sciences jobs or this $130 billion segment of our state’s economy.
“Drug development is an extraordinarily expensive, complex and multifaceted process with middlemen in the supply chain – such as insurers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) – earning more than half of a medication’s final price at purchase. As the Division and New Jersey’s Prescription Drug Affordability Council (PDAC), which lacks representation from the life sciences community, examines ways to lower costs, it must consider the entirety of the prescription drug supply chain – including insurers and PBMs.
“We have strong concerns that the proposed rules, the unbalanced nature of the Council, the lack of pricing expertise among its members, and its operating outside of statutory authority, will combine to generate results that will not only stifle New Jersey’s life-saving innovation ecosystem, but also cause job losses within this sector so critical to our state’s economy and global human health. We are further concerned about the privacy and confidentiality of the submitted data. We urge the Division to seriously consider our submitted comments.”