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Speaker Mariano: “We’re coming back to work on this”
BOSTON, MARCH 26, 2025……The House Democrats redrafting Gov. Maura Healey’s budget won’t adopt her plan to add new taxes on prescription drugs, House Speaker Ron Mariano said Wednesday, appearing to take off the table more than $200 million in proposed levies.
Mariano told pharmaceutical leaders at MassBio’s “State of Possible” conference that the House would drop the idea Healey included in her $62 billion annual budget bill in January. The speaker indicated to reporters after his speech that the House would also likely not pursue Healey’s idea to apply the sales tax to candy.
Healey’s budget sought a new tax on prescription drug manufacturers for excessive price increases. The administration estimated it could generate $60 million for the state. Her bill would also reestablish a pharmacy assessment on prescription drugs sold in Massachusetts, where pharmacies would be charged 6% per prescription or $2, whichever is less. The estimated $145 million generated from the new charge would have paid for the costly MassHealth program.
“I’m not a doctor … but I subscribe to the Hippocratic Oath. I do no harm, first. That’s why in our House budget coming out, we won’t include any taxes on prescription drugs in our budget. That means no arbitrary taxes tied to a drug’s list price, or on our consumers filling prescriptions,” Mariano said Wednesday.
Mariano told reporters after his speech that the House has looked at similar ideas in the past and decided against them, and at least once voted against an amendment to a bill that was similar to the governor’s pharmacy assessment.
“It doesn’t help,” he said. “We’re concerned about competitiveness and people residing and staying in Massachusetts, and adding two dollars to a prescription just based on the fact that you have to have a prescription — it was not something we wanted to do. It’s the wrong message.”
Asked if those concerns around competitiveness influence how he is looking at Healey’s other tax proposals in the fiscal 2026 budget, Mariano responded, “Yes, absolutely.”
The speaker’s declarations came midway through public hearings on the governor’s budget, and weeks before a House Ways and Means Committee redraft of the bill is due to be released.
The governor recommended newly applying the sales tax to candy for an estimated $20 million in revenue, applying tobacco taxes to synthetic nicotine pouches, and capping how much taxpayers could claim under a charitable deduction, which officials say is worth up to $164 million. General tax collections outside of the income tax on high earners have slowed, returning to pre-pandemic levels of growth, while spending appetites remain high — and budgetwriters are looking for creative ways to find revenue to support spending.
“The interesting thing is for some of them, we have a history, and it’s not good. We’ve never supported, I know at least twice we’ve voted down the sugar tax, so you can extrapolate from that,” Mariano responded.
The speaker’s announcement during his speech that the House would not pursue the new taxes on prescription drugs was met with applause from the audience.
Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante, the number-two Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, expressed concerns about the governor’s proposal this month at a budget hearing, and asked how the state could avoid the charges being “transferred onto the consumer by Big Pharma.”
Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz replied that the pharmaceutical tax on manufacturers for exceeding cost growth benchmarks would allow prescription drug prices to grow at the same rate as inflation, but not to exceed inflation.
“I think that, in itself, provides a constraint that protects consumers. Again, this is in the case where we have excess drug pricing,” he said. “In an ideal world, there’d be no penalties and there’d be no charges.”
Mariano on Wednesday also announced his chamber would revisit some House-backed initiatives that didn’t make it into the pharmaceutical law lawmakers hammered out late last year.
They include requiring insurance companies to count any assistance a consumer receives towards their out-of-pocket spend; making permanent the ability of consumers to use drug manufacturer coupons to pay for prescriptions; and ensuring that pharmacy benefit managers pass through at least 80% of the discounts they negotiate directly to consumers.
“We wanted to include, and we will include, we’re coming back to work on this,” he said.
