Legislators Introduce New Pharmacy Tax Legislation

Lawmakers at the North Carolina General Assembly have introduced legislation that would create a new pharmacy tax on prescriptions filled in North Carolina.

The bill does this by increasing dispensing fees by as much as 1000 percent.

Dispensing fees are simply fees you pay to a pharmacist to fill a prescription. They are a fee on top of the cost you pay for your medicine.

The special interest groups behind the bill were clever in how they crafted the new tax.

They knew simply saying they wanted you to pay more to get your medicine would never fly.

Instead, they tried the hide the tax inside a larger bill with seemingly harmless language.

But sure enough, it is in there.

On the second page of the bill, it mandates that pharmacists be reimbursed a professional dispensing fee.

That is fine. Pharmacists provide an important service and should be paid for it.

But here is the sneaky part. The bill says “a ‘professional dispensing fee’ means an amount equal to or higher than the fee-for-service professional drug dispensing fee calculated using the reimbursement methodology described in the North Carolina Medicaid State Plan.”

It is confusing on purpose.

But here is what it means.

Dispensing fees for people with health insurance plans through the marketplace or an employer are under $2 on average.  

Through the North Carolina Medicaid State Plan they are $10.24. They are so much higher because Medicaid pays far less for the actual drug than commercial insurance. The high dispensing fee helps make sure pharmacies will serve Medicaid patients.

But for all of those with insurance through their job or the marketplace, this law means that on every prescription you fill, the cost goes from a dollar and some change, to $10.24 cents.

Plus, the actual cost of your medicine.

This will be a financial windfall for the big pharmacy chains, but it will cost North Carolina consumers hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

North Carolina is already the most expensive state for healthcare in the country. This pharmacy tax will only make it worse.