Senate Democrats, led by Ron Wyden, Oregon, revived a bipartisan healthcare package pushed aside at the end of 2024 that includes telehealth extensions and pharmacy benefit manager reform, reverses doc pay cuts and addresses the opioid crisis, proposed legislation obtained by Fierce Healthcare shows.
That legislation was not brought to the floor March 10, failing again to advance through Congress. "Another swing and a miss," said a spokesperson for the National Community Pharmacists Association, a group advocating continuously for PBM reform. The provisions in the 482-page Bipartisan Healthcare Act, which were included in an end-of-the-year package, seemed destined to pass last year until Elon Musk led a charge on social media site X among Republicans to oppose the spending bill for reasons unrelated to healthcare, despite the bipartisan support toward the health policy items.
Dems tried passing the healthcare provisions that never quite materialized during the 118th Congress. They intended to pass the bill by unanimous consent to bypass procedural hoops, which would require each member of the Senate to vote in favor of the bill, reported The Hill. With this method, opponents of the package outside of Congress would only have to convince one senator to knock the fast-tracked process off the rails.
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