Ohio patients would get steadier drug coverage midyear

In Ohio, a prescription that starts the year covered could be harder for an insurer to rewrite halfway through. The proposal would stop a health plan issuer from increasing a covered person’s cost sharing for a drug, moving it to a higher-cost tier, removing it from the formulary, or otherwise limiting coverage during the health benefit plan year in most cases.

The bill also ties down its language with state-code definitions. It gives the section the same meanings already used in the Revised Code for terms including interchangeable biological product, generically equivalent drug, pharmacy, rate of inflation and wholesale acquisition cost.

When the drug list can move

The guardrails are not absolute. A drug could come off the formulary if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a statement calling its clinical safety into question, if the manufacturer reported a permanent discontinuance or interruption in manufacture as required by federal law, or if the manufacturer removed it from sale in the United States.

The practical effect is simple. Families would have more reason to trust that the prescription they budgeted for in January would still be on the same terms later in the year, instead of forcing a new search for coverage after treatment has already begun.