Thursday, May 1, 2008

Drug Repository Update

I forgot to mention that I met briefly with Sara Gelser last Friday, April 25. She says that the process will probably go forward as follows:

1) She drafted up a bill, which she sent to me earlier this week for comment. I made a suggestion to have the repository include more than just cancer meds.
2) She will then send the bill to the lawyers, who will fix it and make sure it has the correct legal language. This may take a couple of months.
3) Once it's ready, she will introduce the legislation for next year's legislative session. I think she said this will be in late fall/early winter.
4) This is when we mobilize support for the bill. This can take a lot of forms, like getting letters to the editor written, asking whoever (individuals and/or organizations) to write to their state legislators to support the bill, etc. This will happen next winter, most likely.

So, at the moment, things are out of our hands. I am just so happy that Sara is taking the ball and running with it on the legal/legislative side of things. I will keep people posted on its progress. I think, though, that we may want to advertise the proposed legislation during Jeanne Sather's talk here at OSU on May 20 and May 21. Jeanne is planning to talk about it.

1 comment:

Jeanne said...

Dee--this is so great. I'm going to include this topic in my campus talk when I'm down there, and I'm going to send the link to your post to a friend at WashingtonCAN, which is the group I lobbied with to get the lifetime limit raised on my health insurance.

I asked WashingtonCAN if they would add drug repositories to their legislative agenda this year, and they turned me down. So Oregon may do it first.

Jeanne
www.assertivepatient.com