Current Legislation
CPhA-Sponsored Legislation
To read the text of the bill, click on the bill. If you have any questions, please contact Michelle Rivas, Executive Vice President, Government Relations at mrivas@cpha.com.
AB 317 (Weber) – Pharmacist Services Coverage
This bill would require a health care service plan and certain disability insurers that offer coverage for a service that is within the scope of practice of a duly licensed pharmacist to pay or reimburse the cost of services performed by a pharmacist at an in-network pharmacy or by a pharmacist at an out-of-network pharmacy if the health care service plan or insurer has an out-of-network pharmacy benefit.
Status: Senate Health Committee
AB 913 (Petrie-Norris) – Pharmacy Benefits Managers: Regulation
This bill will:
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Create a licensing structure for PBMs to be licensed by a regulatory body and gives clear authority to that body to enforce the provisions of this law.
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Require PBMs to a file a transparency report with the regulatory body on a yearly basis that includes aggregate costs, fees, amount of rebates, and other financial information.
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When PBMs utilize maximum allowable costs for a particular drug, requires that the PBMs provided each pharmacy information updated every seven days, provide a process for a pharmacy to appeal a determination, and limit use of maximum allowable costs to situations where the drug is not obsolete and is a multiple source drug
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Set limits on the ability of PBMs to require credentials above what is required under federal and state law and retaliate against a pharmacist or pharmacy
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Limit PBMs from patient steering, including limiting them from requiring an enrollee to use only an affiliated pharmacy that is a retail pharmacy, financially inducing transfers to affiliated pharmacies, or restricting the use of a particular network pharmacy
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Prohibit the use of untrue, deceptive, or misleading advertisements, promotions, solicitations, representations, proposals, or offers.
Status: 2-year bill. Assembly Business & Professions Committee
SB 339 (Wiener) HIV preexposure prophylaxis.
This bill would require a health care service plan and health insurer to cover preexposure prophylaxis furnished by a pharmacist, including costs for the pharmacist’s services and related testing. It will also allow a pharmacist to provide the medication beyond the current 60-day limit.
Status: Senate Health Committee
Priority Legislation
SB 70 (Wiener) – Prescription drug coverage.
SB 70 strengthens California’s prohibition on non-medical switching, when a health plan forces a patient to switch from a prescribed drug to a different drug for non-medical reasons. This bill states that the prohibition also applies when a provider prescribes a new dose or dosage form for the same drug to improve its efficacy. By expanding this coverage and these protections, SB 70 strengthens patient stability.
Sponsor: Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation
Position: Support
Status: Senate Floor
SB 524 (Cabarello) – Pharmacy Practice: Test-to-Treat
SB 524 will expand access to critical health care services for Californians by allowing pharmacists to directly administer treatment to patients for a limited number of conditions. Pharmacists currently have the authority to perform testing for specified diseases, including but not limited to COVID-19, Influenza and RSV. This bill expands upon this authorization to allow pharmacists to also provide direct treatment for patients following certain positive test results.
Sponsor: California Community Pharmacy Coalition
Position: Support
Status: Held in Senate Appropriations Committee
SB 786 (Portantino) – Prescription Drug Pricing
This bill is intended to address the discriminatory practice of some PBMs that reimburse 340B covered entities less in payment for provider’s pharmacy services than they reimburse non-safety net pharmacies.
Sponsor: AIDS Healthcare Foundation
Position: Support
Status: Assembly – Pending Referral
SB 873 (Bradford) – Prescription drugs: cost sharing
This bill, would require an enrollee’s or insured’s defined cost sharing for each prescription drug to be calculated at the point of sale based on a price that is reduced by an amount equal to 90% of all rebates received, or to be received, in connection with the dispensing or administration of the drug. The bill would require a health care service plan or health insurer to, among other things, pass through to each enrollee or insured at the point of sale a good faith estimate of the enrollee’s or insured’s decrease in cost sharing.
The bill would require a health care service plan or health insurer to calculate an enrollee’s or insured’s defined cost sharing and provide that information to the dispensing pharmacy, as specified.
Sponsors: California Access Coalition, Patient Pocket Protector Coalition, Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition
Position: Support
Status: Senate Floor
AB 602 (Pellerin) – California State Board of Pharmacy: emergency refills: report
Existing law authorizes a pharmacist to refill a prescription for a dangerous drug or device without the prescriber’s authorization if the prescriber is unavailable and if, in the pharmacist’s professional judgment, failure to refill the prescription might interrupt the patient’s ongoing care and have a significant adverse effect on the patient’s well-being.
This bill would require the board, on or before February 28, 2025, to submit a report to the legislature regarding the total number of times a pharmacist refilled a prescription for a dangerous drug or device without the prescriber’s authorization pursuant to the above-mentioned authority.
This bill would require the report to also include total number of complaints submitted by consumers alleging that a pharmacist failed to refill a prescription for a dangerous drug or device because the prescriber was unavailable to authorize the refill and would require the board to make a reasonable effort to determine how many of these complaints resulted from pharmacist’s failure to refill a prescription due to a lack of understanding of the full authority vested in the pharmacist under existing law.
This bill would require the board to take reasonable steps to ensure that all pharmacists are fully aware of their authority to refill a prescription of a dangerous drug or device when the prescriber is unavailable.
Sponsor: Author
Position: Oppose Unless Amended
Status: Assembly Floor
AB 647 (Holden), Sponsor: United Food and Commercial Workers
AB 647 prevents mass layoffs of trained and skilled grocery store and pharmacy workers and ensures a consistency in food safety and pharmaceutical knowledge among communities by strengthening statewide grocery worker retention and adopting grocery worker recall and rehiring laws. This bill will strengthen the existing California Grocery Worker Retention Law.
Sponsor: United Food and Commercial Workers
Position: Support
Status: Assembly Floor
AB 663 (Haney) – Pharmacy: mobile units
AB 663 would allow mobile pharmacies to provide medications for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) treatment. This change would help expand local efforts to prevent overdose deaths and improve access to healthcare for some of our most vulnerable populations.
Sponsor: City and County of San Francisco
Position: Support
Status: In Senate – Pending Referral
AB 815 (Wood) – Health Care Coverage: Provider Credentials
This proposal would simplify and streamline the health care provider credentialing process for providers and health plans.
Sponsor: Author
Position: Support
Status: Assembly Floor
AB 874 (Weber) – Health Care Coverage: Out-of-Pocket Expenses
This bill will ban the use of copay accumulator programs. The bill will require health insurance plans and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to apply any amount paid by the insured through copay assistance to the patient’s deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.
Sponsors: Hemophilia Council of California (HCC); California Rheumatology Alliance (CRA); Cystic Fibrosis Research Institute (CFRI); and, ALS Association
Position: Support
Status: Assembly Health Committee – Hearing postponed by committee.
AB 948 (Berman) – Prescription drugs
Since 2017, Californians have been protected from rising prescription drug costs with a $250 co-pay cap for their medication, but that consumer protection is set to expire next year without legislative action. AB 948 would make permanent the existing $250 co-pay cap for a 30-day prescription drug supply, ensuring consumers can continue counting on their monthly prescription drug costs staying within reach.
Sponsors: Health Access California; American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO; California Chronic Care Coalition; National Multiple Sclerosis Society; and, Western Center on Law and Poverty
Position: Support
Status: Senate Health Committee
AB 1092 (Wood) – Health care service plans: consolidation.
Existing law authorizes the DMHC Director to disapprove the transaction or agreement if the DMHC Director finds it would substantially lessen competition in health plan products or create a monopoly in this state. This bill strengthens this law by:
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Requires a health plan that intends to acquire or obtain control of an entity through a change of governance or control of a material amount of assets of that entity to give notice to, and secure prior approval from, the DMHC Director.
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Authorizes the DMHC Director to conditionally approve the transaction or agreement, contingent upon the health plan’s agreement to control costs to subscribers and enrollees, in addition to other conditions described in existing law. Requires the DMHC Director to also review relevant information from federal agencies and other state agencies.
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Authorizes the DMHC Director to disapprove the transaction or agreement if the DMHC Director finds the transaction or agreement would substantially lessen competition in the health system or among a particular category of health care providers, in addition to any grounds for disapproval as a result of information provided by a health plan pursuant to pursuant to existing law. Requires the DMHC Director to provide to the AG information related to competition.
Sponsor: Author
Position: Support
Status: Assembly Floor
AB 1286 (Haney) – Pharmacy
This legislation makes a number of changes to pharmacy law including:
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Establishes a mandatory Reporting of medication errors
“The bill would require a licensed community pharmacy, to report all medication errors to an entity approved by the board and to maintain records. The bill would deem these reports confidential and not subject to discovery, subpoena, or disclosure pursuant to the California Public Records Act. Under the bill, a report alone would not be subject to enforcement unless the board receives other information regarding the medication error.”
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Establishes worksite changes including a minimum staffing floor
“This bill would authorize the pharmacist on duty to close a community pharmacy if, in their opinion, the staffing at the pharmacy is inadequate to safely fill or dispense prescriptions or provide other patient care services in a safe manner without fear of retaliation. The bill would require a community pharmacy to be staffed at all times with at least one clerk or pharmacy technician fully dedicated to performing pharmacy-related services. The bill would require, if staffing of pharmacist hours does not overlap sufficiently, that scheduled closures for lunch time for all pharmacy staff be established and publicly posted and included on the outgoing telephone message. The bill would define “community pharmacy” for these purposes.”
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Expands unprofessional conduct
“This bill would expand the list of specified actions that constitute unprofessional conduct to include actions or conduct that would subvert or tend to subvert the efforts of a pharmacist to comply with laws and regulations, or exercise professional judgment, including creating or allowing conditions that may interfere with a pharmacist’s ability to practice with competency and safety or creating or allowing an environment that may jeopardize patient care; actions or conduct that would subvert or tend to subvert the efforts of a pharmacist-in-charge to comply with laws and regulations, exercise professional judgment, or make determinations about adequate staffing levels to safely fill prescriptions of the pharmacy or provide other patient care services in a safe and competent manner; actions or conduct that would subvert or tend to subvert the efforts of a pharmacist intern or and pharmacy technician to comply with laws or regulations; or establishing policies and procedures related to time guarantees to fill prescriptions within a specified time unless those guarantees are required by law or to meet contractual requirements.:
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Expands authority for pharmacy technicians to administer vaccines and other specified functions
“This bill would additionally authorize a pharmacy technician to administer vaccines, administer epinephrine, perform specimen collection for specified tests, receive verbal prescriptions, receive prescription transfers, and accept clarification on prescriptions under prescribed conditions. The bill would prohibit a pharmacy with only one pharmacist from having more than one pharmacy technician performing these additionally authorized tasks and specify that if a pharmacy technician is performing these additionally authorized tasks, a second pharmacy technician is required to be assisting a pharmacist with performing the nondiscretionary tasks currently authorized under existing law.”
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Surgical clinic provisions
“This bill would require a consulting pharmacist, before July 1 of every odd-numbered year, to complete a Surgical Clinic Self-Assessment Form as determined by the board as a means to promote compliance through self-examination and education, as specified, including a requirement that the professional director of the clinic and consulting pharmacist make a prescribed certification signed under penalty of perjury, kept on file in the clinic for 3 years, and made available to the board or its designee, upon request. The bill would require, as part of the renewal process for a clinic license, that the consulting pharmacist certify compliance with the quarterly inspections and provide the most recent self-assessment form.”
Sponsor: Board of Pharmacy
Position: Support if Amended
Status: Assembly Floor
AB 1341 (Berman) Public health: COVID-19: testing and dispensing sites: oral therapeutics
This bill, until January 1, 2025, would authorize a pharmacist to furnish COVID-19 oral therapeutics, as defined, following a positive test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as specified.
Sponsor: Author
Position: Support
Status: Senate Business, Professions & Economic Development Committee
AB 1557 (Flora) – Pharmacy: electronic prescriptions.
Authorizes a pharmacist located and licensed in the state to, on behalf of a licensed hospital, from a location outside of the hospital, verify medication chart orders for appropriateness.
Sponsor: Board of Pharmacy
Position: Support
Status: Senate Business, Professions & Economic Development Committee
