In February 2016, a man sat cackling in his chair across from the U.S. legislators that made up the House Committee on Oversight and Reform as shown in a video from the New York Times. "It's not funny, Mr. Shkreli," said the committee leader Representative Elijah Cummings. "People are dying. And they're getting sicker and sicker." Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, had been called to testify after he’d increased the price of a life-saving drug, Daraprim, from $13.50 to $750.

Despite significant backlash, what Shkreli did was never criminalized, and as a result, prescription drug prices have increased by 33% since 2014 according to GoodRx, and 816 drugs have increased by an average of 4.5% just in January 2021 alone. But after five years, Connecticut has the chance to prohibit drastic drug-price increases with Governor Ned Lamont’s new healthcare plan that would put a 2% cap on increases to prescription drugs. That being said, this bill is unlikely to pass due to the opposition of CVS, Cigna and other insurance carriers, so, the next option is the Connecticut Legislature passing the provision in a separate bill.

Though this solution does seem drastic, this is not Connecticut’s first time regulating drug prices. In 2020, Connecticut passed House Bill 6003 which addressed the price of insulin, which had more than tripled since 2000. The bill limits cost-sharing for insulin and other diabetes medications to $25 per 30-day supply for those with state-regulated commercial health insurance. This bill is a significantly less extreme version of that bill, one that still allows price increases, applied to the entire pharmaceutical industry.

Due to rising drug prices, people have not been taking their medicine as prescribed. According to a survey done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 11.4% of U.S. adults did not take their medication as prescribed in an effort to reduce costs. This issue is especially bad among the uninsured, with 33.6% not taking their medication as prescribed in an effort to lower costs. The aforementioned rise in drug costs will most likely cause these numbers to get even worse, so, by having a 2% cap on drug price increases, it would prevent thousands of Americans from putting their lives in danger by misusing their medicine.

Some experts argue that market competition is the solution to rising drug prices and that capping prices will cause the price of generic drugs to skyrocket. Economists Oliver Mcpherson-Smith and Steve Posiack argued in their opinion piece published on The Hill that “if generic prices cannot oscillate up and down with changes in the economy, it diminishes the incentive to ever cede lower prices because it cannot be easily reversed.” While this concern is valid, it’s important to note that generics aren’t always cheap enough for consumers. For example, a generic version of the aforementioned Daraprim released to the public at a cost of around $183 per pill, which is still 13 times more expensive than the original.

This bill won’t completely stop drug prices from being too high, nor will it completely cap price increases, but it will slow the increase of the number of Americans rationing their medication. It is the middle ground between an extreme solution like House Bill 6003 and the absence of a solution. It is imperative that the Connecticut Legislature passes such a provision and passes it quickly, as drug prices will continue to rise without interference.