Since entering Congress in 2015, Congressman Buddy Carter (R-GA) has made healthcare central to his mission. He’s fought to provide emergency medical care for Georgia’s children, lower drug prices, expand access to life-saving medications, and lower infant mortality.
Although he’s helped us make a lot of progress, we still have a long way to go. That’s why I was happy to see Buddy’s swift introduction of the Patients’ Right to Know Their Medication Act (H.R.1173) in the House of Representatives. This bipartisan, noncontroversial legislation would not only protect rural, senior, and lower-income Georgians, but would also protect our community pharmacies across the state.
As a longtime pharmacist, Buddy understands the importance of bolstering pharmacy care. His bill, H.R. 1173, would standardize patient medication information (PMI) using cognitively backed research to make sure it’s understandable. It would also ensure that PMI is printed and that the burden of printing the PMI is on the drug manufacturer, not the pharmacy.
Currently, PMI formatting and distribution are not standardized. Americans often receive their prescription with PMI with confusing formatting – making it hard to understand sometimes dangerous side effects of medications, instructions, and other important information to make sure you’re taking your medication properly and safely. Lower-income, older, and rural communities in Georgia already disproportionately suffer from medication non-adherence, putting hundreds of thousands of us at risk unnecessarily.
There have been some efforts on the federal level to standardize PMI but they fall woefully short. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a rule that would standardize PMI and encourage the transition from printed PMI to digital. While well-intentioned, their rule would add a $1.6 billion cost burden to our already struggling community pharmacies and make accessing digital PMI hard for Georgians who don’t have access to broadband, lower-income Georgians who don’t have a smartphone, and older Americans who find it hard to keep up with our ever-changing technological world.
Who benefits from this proposed rule if not patients or our pharmacists? The pharmaceutical industry. They’ve been lobbying for years to push the cost burden of providing PMI to pharmacies, while they rake in record profits. This is especially concerning given the epidemic of independent pharmacy closures, a problem Buddy knows all too well.
As a pharmacist and honorable Georgian, Buddy recognizes the damage this FDA rule would wreck on Georgia patients and community pharmacies.
I’m glad we have an advocate in Buddy and I know he’s doing everything he can to build bipartisan support in the House to pass H.R. 1173. With the bill currently in the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, I hope our fellow Georgian and committee member Congressman Rick Allen (R-GA) joins Buddy in fighting to pass this life-saving bill.
