With the stroke of a pen, Gov. Tom Wolf ended—for now—the annual effort to “change the way medical treatment is administered under the workers’ compensation system” by vetoing Senate Bill 936. Over the last few years, the Republican-controlled legislature has been trying to pass various pieces of legislation targeting health care under the Workers’ Compensation Act. Originally, there was a push to implement “evidenced-based medicine” standards, which is a statistical method to treat injured workers that removes medical decision making from doctors in favor of a “cookbook”-style approach reportedly in line with successful outcomes. This most recent attempt at altering the workers’ compensation medical landscape would have ostensibly helped control the opioid crisis and reduced costs to the workers’ compensation system by implementing a prescription drug formulary.

In the rosiest of terms, drug formularies provide for a pre-approval process for prescription drugs that are authorized by the FDA or otherwise “demonstrated to be effective” and offer an authorization process for other medications that a doctor may deem necessary. The bill vetoed by Gov. Wolf would have directed the Department of Labor and Industry to select a nationally recognized, “evidenced-based drug formulary” for treating workplace injuries. Detractors of the formulary bill point out that it would interfere with the relationship between doctors and patients by making it nearly impossible for doctors to decide what medications to prescribe and by limiting treatment options available to injured workers. Of course, both sides agree the main beneficiary in all this would be the insurers who would enjoy lower prescription drug costs.