At least a dozen states are passing laws with wide-ranging impacts on America's diet: 'Informing the public about the dangers'
However, a dozen states have worked to pass laws to throw synthetic food coloring in the trash. And more states might be joining them soon.
In New York, a bill sponsored by Sen. Brian Kavanagh and Assemblymember Anna Kelles seeks to ban the use of a number of potentially harmful additives and artificial dyes from foods sold or manufactured in the state.
Referred to as the Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act, the bill has been brought to the state's Agriculture Committee. "New Yorkers need and deserve the highest level of protection when it comes to the safety of the food we eat," Kavanagh told The Legislative Gazette.
One step ahead of New York, the West Virginia Senate passed House Bill 2354, designed to ban dyes such as Red No. 3, Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6, Blue No. 1, Blue No. 2, and Green No. 3 from foods and drinks.
The health impact of artificial food dyes has been known for years. Studies have shown that dyes such as Red No. 40 have been linked to the rise of early-onset colorectal cancer in mice. Another study investigated the connection between food color additives and hyperactive disorders in children.
Laura Wakim Chapman, chair of the West Virginia Senate Health and Human Resources Committee, spoke to the Guardian regarding the push to ban food dyes. "Viral videos and social media content is informing the public about the dangers of unnecessary food additives," Wakim Chapman said. "I am a mother of two and care deeply about their health. I think most parents do."
The dozen states working to ban artificial food dyes come as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revoked the usage of Red 3 in January 2025. The FDA has instructed manufacturers to "reformulate their products" by Jan. 15, 2027, or Jan. 18, 2028.
In an effort to find alternatives, many natural food dyes have utilized ingredients such as beet powder and even crushed freeze-dried strawberries to find pops of color.
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43 minutes ago
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Ohio pharmacy measure will make closures ‘explode,' group says
A pharmacy manager retrieves a bottle of antibiotics. (Photo by) Compromise budget language hashed out this week by an Ohio House-Senate committee will make problems hurting Ohio pharmacies infinitely worse, the leader of a group that represents them said Thursday. He added that the Ohio Chamber of Commerce — which advocated part of the legislation — seemed blind to the effect it would have on member businesses by making it more difficult for employees to access medicine. As it works against a June 30 budget deadline, a House-Senate conference committee approved an amendment that keeps part of a bill meant to help ailing pharmacies but slashes another. The result, said Dave Burke, a pharmacist, former state senator, and executive director of the Ohio Pharmacists Association, will be that pharmacies will go from earning scant profits to none at all. 'It's any pharmacist's suicide bill,' he said Thursday. Ohio pharmacies have been in trouble for years. They've complained of high fees and low reimbursements from huge middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. Last year, Ohio lost 215 pharmacies and their total number dropped below 2,000 for the first time in memory, according to an online tracker launched by the Ohio Board of Pharmacy. As pharmacies disappear, they create a lack of access that is particularly hard on the poor, elderly and disabled. Not only do they get their medicine at what are often main-street businesses. They also get professional medical advice about chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure. PBMs, the middlemen, decide which drugs are covered, and they use a non-transparent system to decide how much to reimburse pharmacies that dispense them. The three biggest control nearly 80% of the marketplace. As pharmacies close, Ohio Chamber blasted for siding with middlemen Each of those companies is part of a Fortune 15 health conglomerate that also owns a top-10 health insurer. CVS owns the largest retail pharmacy chain and all three own mail-order pharmacies. So, when the big PBMs decide reimbursements, impose rules and charge fees, they're doing so for their own pharmacies and their competitors. That's a glaring conflict of interest, their critics say. There have been abuses in Ohio. In 2018, the Ohio Department of Medicaid peeled back the curtain and learned that a year earlier CVS and UnitedHealth's PBM, OptumRx, charged taxpayers $224 million more for drugs than they paid the pharmacies that had dispensed them. The Medicaid department fired the PBMs. In 2022 it got rid of their hidden, seemingly arbitrary system of reimbursement in which the same companies sometimes pay 500 different prices for the same drug. Instead, prices are determined by a public survey published by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — the National Drug Acquisition Cost, or NADAC. With pharmacies no longer losing money on some drugs and making it on others, the Medicaid department set a $10 per-prescription dispensing fee to cover pharmacies' overhead. Even with the increased dispensing fees, an analysis said the state saved $140 million from the reforms. Ohio state Rep. Tim Barhorst, R-Fort Laramie, this year proposed to use the same arrangement in many non-Medicaid transactions. That measure made it into the Ohio House budget, but then ran into opposition in the Ohio Senate, where the Ohio Chamber had been telling members the dispensing-fee requirement was a tax. What emerged from the conference committee late Wednesday might have seemed like a compromise to its members. It kept the provision that drug reimbursements would be based on NADAC, the publicly available price list, but it got rid of dispensing fees. To Burke and other Ohio pharmacists, it's the worst of both worlds. Not only couldn't they profit from over-reimbursements under the traditional, non-transparent system, they also couldn't cover overhead from a fixed dispensing fee. Of the measure agreed to by the conferees, Burke said, 'That proposition only works with a second proposition — the dispensing fee. Because the bag, the bottle, the lid, the pharmacist, the tech, the lights, the heat and the air conditioning all have a cost. In any business model, whether it's medications, pizzas or cars… you can't buy ingredients for a dollar and sell pizzas for a dollar and stay in business.' He predicted that if it becomes law, there will be a mass exodus from the already depleted ranks of Ohio pharmacies. 'If pharmacies can't make any money — this legislation makes it so that you're not making any money at all — it would probably force the closure of the overwhelming majority of pharmacies in this state,' Burke said. 'Even a child mowing yards is not going to buy a dollar's worth of gas and accept a dollar to mow your yard.' Once conferees agree on a budget, Gov. Mike DeWine has the power to veto line-items in it. Burke said he hoped the governor would consider such a move. 'I think the governor's office would be well placed to consider a veto and we will be expressing our concerns that the legislation is flawed, and that if he doesn't, the amount of pharmacy closures in Ohio in the next weeks if not months will explode,' Burke said. Dan Tierney, DeWine's press secretary, was non-committal when asked about the matter. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'We have not received final budget language but will be reviewing the final language when received,' he said in an email Thursday. Burke didn't accuse any of his former colleagues of ill-intent in agreeing to the measure. 'I think they believed that if they stepped in and said we'll make sure you get paid what you paid for the drug that will fix everything,' Burke said. 'But this legislation takes everything you made a profit on and brings it to zero.' However, he did say he was mystified about the Ohio Chamber's reasons for intervening in the matter. 'I don't know where the chamber adopted its stance from, but it's hard for me, as an independent business owner, to understand why major employers would want to increase their employees' difficulty getting medications.' Burke was incensed that the Ohio Chamber would call dispensing fees — payments to cover overhead — a tax. 'It's amazing to me that the chamber should take the position that business owners should not make a profit,' he said. 'I thought the Ohio Chamber was all about profit, pro-business and competitive markets. But they've adopted the position that this particular sector of business owners should not make any money. They consider the dispensing fee to be a tax. So apparently, any profit that any business makes is a tax. Maybe they've gone socialist over there. I don't understand. Maybe they're not looking at their own pharmacy benefit with any understanding.' The Ohio Chamber didn't immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment. But earlier this week, Senior Vice President Rick Carfagna said the goal was to protect Ohio businesses from paying too much to underwrite employees' drugs. There are, however, questions about the body's relationship with the giant conglomerates that own the PBMs. For example CVS Health was a 'presenting sponsor' of the Chamber's 2024 Healthcare Summit, Among the questions the Ohio Chamber didn't immediately respond to was how much CVS paid to sponsor the event — or how much the chamber had received from the big-three conglomerates over the past five years. In earlier responses, Carfagna didn't address the growing number of pharmacy deserts in Ohio, or that struggling independent and small-chain pharmacies are themselves small businesses that the Ohio Chamber says it wants to protect. Burke said all the Ohio Chamber's members will be harmed if the conference committee language becomes law and mass closures result. That would mean sicker employees with difficulties getting medicine. 'I hope the Chamber actually goes and speaks with the people they're supposed to represent and see if this policy position is reflective of the way they want to treat their employees,' Burke said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
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43 minutes ago
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Senate megabill marks biggest Medicaid cuts in history
Senate Republicans on Tuesday passed the largest cuts to Medicaid since the program began in the 1960s, a move that would erode the social safety net and cause a spike in the number of uninsured Americans over the next decade. The tax and spending bill is projected to cost more than $3 trillion during that time, but it would be partially paid for with about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. Almost 12 million lower-income Americans would lose their health insurance by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). It still needs to pass the House again, where some moderate Republicans have expressed concerns about the cuts. The CBO was still analyzing the bill after it was released late Friday, and many last-minute changes meant a more exact forecast on coverage losses wasn't possible before the Senate rushed to vote on it. President Trump and most congressional Republicans say the reductions aren't true cuts. They argue nobody who should be on Medicaid will lose benefits. 'We're cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill, and you're not going to feel any of it,' President Trump said at the White House last week. Still, experts and health advocates say the CBO analysis confirms that despite Trump's repeated pledges to only cut waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, the legislation would enact an unprecedented reduction in the program currently used by more than 70 million low-income Americans. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) made an impassioned speech on the Senate floor Sunday night warning that Trump was breaking his promise not to cut Medicaid. 'The people in the White House advising the president, they're not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise,' Tillis said the day after announcing he would not seek reelection. 'I'm telling the president, you have been misinformed. You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.' Over time, the losses will blunt the significant coverage gains made under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed by then-President Obama in 2010. 'This bill isn't being crafted to improve health care in America, or to improve the Medicaid program, or to improve the [ACA]. The purpose of these cuts in the bill is to try to find savings to pay for tax cuts,' said Andrea Ducas, vice president of health policy at the Democratic-aligned Center for American Progress. 'It's treating these health care programs as a [piggy bank]. It's just, how do we extract as much from these programs as humanly possible so that we can find the savings to pay for tax cuts,' Ducas said. The effects of the cut could be devastating, beyond coverage losses. People who lose their Medicaid would have to pay more out of pocket, driving up medical debt and leading to them likely delaying needed treatment or medication. Hospitals would see a spike in uncompensated care and overcrowding of emergency rooms. Even people who still have insurance may not have anywhere to go for care. Hospitals, nursing homes and other providers operating on thin margins warn they could close. 'Seniors will struggle to afford long-term care. People with disabilities will lose critical healthcare coverage that allows them to work and live independently. Rural communities across America will be decimated from hospital closures, and people will lose their lives,' said Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a statement. 'It is unfathomable to see policymakers intentionally inflict so much damage on the people they represent.' Experts said it's nearly impossible to take almost $1 trillion out of Medicaid without impacting the entire health system, not just the people who lose insurance. By design, the group that would be hit the hardest are people who gained insurance when their states expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare. 'The bill particularly attempts to undermine the Medicaid expansion,' said Jennifer Tolbert, deputy director of the program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at health policy research organization KFF. 'It doesn't exactly repeal it, but many of the provisions target both expansion states and the expansion population.' The bill would achieve its savings in various ways, but the bulk of the cuts come from a strict national work requirement and new restrictions on state-levied taxes on health providers. The provider taxes were the second-largest Medicaid cut in the House bill, after the work requirements. The cuts are even larger under the Senate design. Those changes would reduce spending by nearly $191 billion over a decade, according to the CBO estimate. States impose taxes on providers to boost their federal Medicaid contributions, which they then redirect to hospitals in the form of higher reimbursements. Limiting provider taxes is a long-held conservative goal, as they argue states are gaming the current system and driving up federal Medicaid spending. But senators representing states with poorer, rural populations have objected to the scale of the provider tax cuts, including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Tillis. The House bill would freeze the tax rate for most states, but the Senate version would require many states to lower their existing rates. As an incentive for senators uncomfortable with the provision, the bill includes a $25 billion fund to aid rural hospitals. Overnight Monday, senators voted down an amendment from Collins to double the size of the fund and increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy, but the final version ultimately included $50 billion for the fund. Hospitals said the relief fund isn't enough to make up for the impacts of the bill, and they urged lawmakers to reject it in favor of the House version — which also would have enacted unprecedented Medicaid cuts, but was less damaging to rural providers. Even some Republicans sounded the alarm. Tillis focused his ire on the provider taxes and state-directed payments, arguing they were simply too harmful to his constituents. He warned his fellow Republicans that their support for the bill could boomerang and cost them politically. Hawley condemned the provider tax cuts and other Medicaid changes but voted for the bill anyway. Part of his reasoning, he said, was that the bill was changed to delay implementation of the cuts for another year. He also touted 'tax cuts for working families' and an extension of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Hawley in a statement after the vote urged the House to pass the bill quickly, while sounding a warning on Medicaid. 'Let me be clear, I will continue to do everything in my power to reverse future cuts to Medicaid. If Republicans want to be the party of the working class, we cannot cut health insurance for working people.' The other major Medicaid change in the bill is work requirements. For the first time in the history of the Medicaid program, the bill would require beneficiaries to prove they are working or in school at least 80 hours a month to keep their health insurance starting Dec. 31, 2026. The Senate version extends the requirement to low-income parents of children older than 14, in addition to childless adults without disabilities. States can apply for a 'good faith' exemption to delay the start until 2029, but it's up to the discretion of the Trump administration to grant it. Advocates said giving the administration power to delay coverage losses has the potential to politicize the work requirements, as the White House could grant waivers to important states Republicans need to win. The work requirements are projected to save about $325 billion over a decade, because millions of people would be moved off Medicaid rolls. Nearly six million people would eventually lose Medicaid for not meeting the House bill's work requirements, according to CBO. Work requirements 'are only money savers if people lose coverage. Otherwise they wouldn't be in this bill,' Ducas said. 'I think that's pretty clearly the intent.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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43 minutes ago
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Gov. DeWine vetoes measure that would have been ‘suicide' for Ohio pharmacies
(Stock photo) Ohio pharmacists were worried that a measure inserted into the state budget would cause mass closures. Gov. Mike DeWine on Monday vetoed it, saying that lawmakers in the Ohio House and Senate asked him to. In his veto message, DeWine acknowledged that Ohio pharmacies are closing rapidly, and said he and Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel will keep working on the problem. Last year, Ohio lost 215 pharmacies and the total number dropped below 2,000 for the first time in memory, according to an online tracker launched by the Ohio Board of Pharmacy. Pharmacy owners have long complained that huge pharmacy middlemen with conflicted interests have used a non-transparent system to underpay them and drive them out of business. In response, legislation was introduced in the Ohio House earlier this year that would require the middlemen to reimburse pharmacies for drugs based on a public database compiled by the federal government. That would only allow pharmacies to break even on drugs. So the legislation also required the middlemen to pay a $10 per-prescription dispensing fee to cover pharmacies' overhead such as payroll, rent, taxes, and insurance. It's based on a statewide survey regularly conducted among pharmacies. Then the Ohio Chamber of Commerce got involved, telling state senators that the dispensing fees were a tax and that they should oppose them. The chamber made that claim even though the Ohio Department of Medicaid in 2022 adopted a similar system and saved $140 million in the process. Despite requests, the Ohio Chamber hasn't disclosed how much money it gets from the middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. The company that owns the biggest PBM, CVS Health, was a 'presenting sponsor' of the Chamber's 2024 Healthcare Summit, and an executive with the company delivered a keynote speech. The Ohio Senate attempted a compromise between the House legislation and the Ohio Chamber's demand for no dispensing fees. It would have required PBMs to reimburse pharmacies in a transparent system, but it would have eliminated minimum dispensing fees. The Ohio Pharmacists Association said that would be much worse for pharmacies than the current, inadequate setup. Pharmacies could only break even on their drugs, and they couldn't recoup their overhead, they said. 'It's any pharmacist's suicide bill,' Dave Burke, the organization's executive director, said last week. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX In vetoing it, DeWine agreed. 'This item was intended to strike a compromise between interested parties on how to best regulate the practice of pharmacy benefit managers in Ohio and the requirements for fair and transparent reimbursement for Ohio pharmacies,' the governor's veto message said. 'However, due to drafting errors, the language will not achieve the legislative intent of providing the needed oversight of pharmacy benefit manager practices. Subsequently, the language as written, may result in further detriment to Ohio pharmacies, especially those in small, rural communities, and could result in a reduction in health care access for many Ohioans.' The message explained that those who wrote the legislation into the state budget asked that it be pulled back. 'Due to the errors in drafting final language, the Ohio House of Representatives and Ohio Senate have requested this veto,' DeWine's veto message said. 'Therefore, a veto of this item is in the public interest.' In an interview Tuesday, Burke said he didn't think there was any ill intent on the part his former colleagues in the Ohio Senate. 'I think people are getting misinformation from the PBMs, who are trying to maintain their foothold and prevent a free and transparent market,' he said. Burke also said he didn't believe the Ohio Chamber was selling out its Ohio membership in favor of out-of-state, Fortune 15 health conglomerates that own the big-three PBMs. 'I don't think the Ohio Chamber is anti-pharmacy,' said Burke, who is himself a pharmacist. 'I think they just don't understand how their benefits are actually being administered.' But he added that every business in Ohio has an interest in a healthy network of pharmacies. 'I don't know what they're going to do when their employees can't get their prescription drugs where they live,' Burke said. 'That's happening now in real time. We have pharmacy deserts and they're getting worse every year.' Denise Conway, who in 2019 restored pharmacy services in Danville, said the veto is far from enough to solve the problems besetting Ohio pharmacies. 'It is a slight win for pharmacies across Ohio and I am grateful for the governor's vision to see that things aren't being addressed,' she said in a text message Tuesday. In his veto message, DeWine said more needs to be done. 'It is important to note that the DeWine-Tressel Administration is committed to further reforms of pharmacy benefit managers, as already demonstrated in improvements made in Ohio's Medicaid program through the adoption of the Single Pharmacy Benefit Manager,' it said, referring to the measure that saved taxpayers $140 million. 'This administration is committed to working with the Ohio General Assembly in the future to deliver a pharmacy-benefit-manager regulatory bill.' Burke said that he might be partly to blame for the PBM-aligned position taken by the Ohio Chamber. 'I have to think, knowing (Senior Vice President) Rick Carfagna and (President and CEO) Steve Stivers, that they're not ignorant and they're not bought and paid for,' Burke said. 'They're intelligent people. Maybe it's my fault for not stopping by and sitting down with them.' He added that he's ready to work with the Ohio Chamber or anybody else to shore up Ohio's dwindling network of pharmacies. 'We're in a bad place,' Burke said. The Ohio Pharmacists Association 'definitely has an open hand and an open mind for anyone who's willing to work with us on this issue. But we are running out of time.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
