When people talk about prescription drug prices, it can often turn into a debate about complicated healthcare systems and big numbers and policies that feel completely disconnected from real life.
But when you strip all that away, you get down to a couple of simple goals: make things easier for patients to afford and make sure hospitals and clinics – especially in rural areas – are able to stay afloat and keep serving our communities.
This is something we worked on in the Senate this week. Senate File 3769 deals with a federal program called 340B, which has been around since 1992. Here's how it works: hospitals and clinics that serve low-income patients (think rural critical access hospitals, community health centers, HIV/AIDS care programs, and facilities like that) are allowed to buy prescription drugs from manufacturers at a steep discount. Many of these providers are already stretched thin. The savings from 340B helps them keep operating and, just as important, keep taking care of patients who often have nowhere else to go.
In 2024, Minnesota passed a law that said drug manufacturers can't cut off those discounts to 340B providers. The problem was that law was toothless. Drug companies knew it, so some of them started ignoring it.
SF 3769 tries to close that gap. It makes the ban permanent and adds an enforcement mechanism so manufacturers who ignore the law can be held accountable. I put my name on this bill as a co-author because I believe in what it's trying to do. Rural hospitals across Minnesota rely heavily on 340B funding. These are not wealthy institutions with big financial cushions. Many of them are running on very thin margins, and if manufacturers walk away from them, the consequences are severe. Reduced services, staff cuts, and in the worst cases, closures.
However, I voted against this bill despite being a co-author because of a serious concern that I have heard a lot of opposition to in recent weeks: the bill gives enforcement authority to the attorney general.
There are a lot of reasons this is a problem. The AG's office is already stretched across a lot of different areas. Adding this on top of everything else is not the right fit. The Department of Commerce, the Department of Health, DHS, any of those would be a better home for this kind of oversight. When I put my name on the bill, I hoped we could negotiate something that works for everyone. That didn’t happen.
During floor debate I offered an amendment that would have kept the sunset repeal in place while we took more time to work out a better enforcement path. Senate Democrats were not willing to work together. The amendment failed, and the bill passed without the changes many people were asking for.
I genuinely support the goal of this bill. But I was not willing to vote yes to a deeply flawed bill just to be on the winning side.
The Senate passed the bill, but it faces a tough path in the House as it is currently written. There is still time to get it fixed and passed before we are required to adjourn for the year. I am going to keep pushing for a version of this that protects rural hospitals, keeps prescription drug savings flowing to the patients who need them, and gets the enforcement issue right.