Democrats reject GOP amendment to restore state trade secret protections for drug pricing info.

[TexasTowelie]

Democrats reject Republican amendment to restore state trade secret protections for drug pricing information


A Democratic-controlled Senate rejected on Wednesday an amendment backed by their Republican colleagues that would have removed a carveout in state trade secret law long opposed by the national drug lobby.

In a speech on the floor, Senate Republican Leader James Settelmeyer framed the amendment as an attempt to codify an agreement reached between drug companies and the state following a lawsuit over Nevada’s first-in-the-nation diabetes drug pricing transparency law passed in 2017, which required manufacturers and drug pricing middlemen to disclose to the state certain costs and profits associated with the manufacture and sale of diabetes drugs. As part of that agreement, the state mapped out a process in regulation to protect information that drug companies believe to be trade secret protected from public disclosure.

But as lawmakers are looking to expand that law to also apply to asthma drugs this session, drug companies have raised concerns that those regulatory protections don’t go far enough because they specifically refer to the 2017 bill.

“The framework for protection of trade secrets in the regulations adopted for diabetes transparency reporting applies to disclosures under statute but were written by referencing the specific bill that created those sections,” the drug lobbying organization Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) said in a statement opposing the asthma bill. “The confidentiality language in the regulations for the diabetes transparency bill should be adopted in SB 262 to clarify that the requirements and considerations apply to disclosures required by those sections of statute generally and not just pursuant to any specific bill.”

Read more: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/democrats-reject-republican-amendment-to-restore-state-trade-secret-protections-for-drug-pricing-information