Massachusetts residents are sick and bored with paying taxes, and a brand new ballot reveals robust opposition from doubtless voters on Gov. Maura Healey’s proposal to reinstitute a long-dormant payment on pharmaceuticals.
The Fiscal Alliance Basis, a nonpartisan watchdog nonprofit, has discovered that Healey’s plan to impose a brand new “pharmacy assessment” tax on pharmaceuticals is being met with “staggering disapproval.”
Roughly 83% of the 800 doubtless voters who participated in a ballot earlier this month opposed the proposal, with simply 6% in favor. Of the respondents, 48.2% had been Unbiased, 40.6% Democrat and 11.1% Republican.
Probably voters are having issue getting behind Healey’s proposal to triple the car excise tax, with 78% of respondents in opposition. A majority additionally indicated they’d utterly assist repealing the state’s property and car excise taxes.
“We see a real strong thread of anti-tax sentiment,” pollster Jim Eltringham mentioned in a Friday briefing. “When you start talking about the possibility of new taxes that’s when you really start seeing some strong reactions. … It’s not overly surprising, especially given the economic environment in general, to have people say ‘That’s enough.’”
In her proposed $62 billion price range for the 2026 fiscal yr, Healey buried her administration’s plan to reestablish a “pharmacy assessment” on all pharmaceuticals offered within the Bay State.
The evaluation would see pharmacies charged 6% per prescription or $2 per, whichever is much less. The price range doesn’t confer with the evaluation as a tax. As an alternative, it says the fee could be added as a “broad-based healthcare-related fee” due quarterly.
Pharmacies that fail to adjust to the plan might face fines of as much as $25,000, and even danger shedding their licenses.
Fiscal Alliance Government Director Paul Diego Craney mentioned final month that he believes the governor’s plan would lead to sufferers paying increased prices at a time once they’re already struggling to afford different important items.
Within the ballot launched Friday, 81% of the doubtless voters asserted they consider Legal professional Basic Andrea Campbell ought to implement an audit of the state legislature. Final November, 72% of voters permitted Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s request for the audit, however Beacon Hill leaders are refusing to adjust to the brand new legislation.
“These are very strong feelings by the voters,” Craney mentioned in a press release. “It’s nearly impossible to hit 80% in a poll and the Governor and Attorney General better pay attention.”
Based on info from the state Government Workplace of Health and Human Providers, the $2 per prescription cost might generate as much as $145 million in charges annually. On the identical time, the Healey Administration doesn’t anticipate sufferers to see any monetary impression from the plan as insurers set the prescription copays, not pharmacists.
The cash raised would assist fund MassHealth and be used to assist forestall pharmacy closures in low-income neighborhoods, the place individuals are extra prone to be enrolled in a MassHealth program.
This isn’t the primary time the state has thought-about charging pharmacies for prescriptions. The state Legislature permitted a plan in 2002 to cost $1.30 per prescription which went into impact in January 2003.
The legislation was enforced for about half a yr till Massachusetts Superior Court docket Decide Allan van Gestel overturned it the next summer season, ruling that the state had didn’t comply with the correct procedures for tax implementation and by no means secured required federal approval of their plan.
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