The debate over Issue 2 stirred a fight over the rising cost of drug prices and if the proposal would actually bring those prices down. It was a fight that ultimately became the most expensive ballot campaign in Ohio history. But voters rejected the ballot measure and as Statehouse correspondent Andy Chow reports, with all the money and debate, nothing about the drug industry will change.
A not-so-simple sell
'The money was a tremendous fog for voters.'
The major players behind the No on Issue 2 campaign say they had a tough hill to climb. They had to overcome what seemed like a simple sell: people want to pay less for prescription drugs.
But Dale Butland, spokesperson for the opposition, says they were able to turn the tide because they argued it would increase actually costs for two-thirds of Ohioans and they got dozens of respected groups to come out against the measure. That includes doctors, nurses and pharmacy associations.
“People trust these organizations and if every expert who had looked at this or virtually every expert who looked at this said it was a bad idea I think that was enough for most voters in Ohio,” Butland said.
Big money and confusion
But supporters of Issue 2 believe there’s an easy explanation for how Butland and the No side won: money. Campaign filings show that the opposition, backed by big drug companies, raised more than $70 million to fight the measure that would force the state to buy drugs at a discounted rate.
Yes on Issue 2 spokesperson Dennis Willard says that kind of money bought up ads and other campaign materials that caused confusion.
“The money was a tremendous fog for voters unfortunately and keep in mind that $75 million are all from excess profits these drug companies make from overcharging and price gouging patients,” Willard said.
'Everybody involved in the health care system wants to participate in the decisions that are made in that health care system.'
“Confusing” seemed to be the word used over and over again to describe Issue 2. Some even suggested that when voters are confused about a ballot issue they tend to vote no. But Butland strongly rejects that claim.
“I think that’s insulting,” Butland said. “Ohio voters are perfectly capable of understanding the issues and making up their own mind.”
Nearly 80 percent of the voters rejected Issue 2. Curt Steiner, managed the opposition’s campaign, he says that overwhelming win tells him that voters knew what they were doing when they headed to the polls.
“When you have numbers like this there’s not a whole lot of confusion,” Steiner said. “Clearly very much we could see in our own internal polling that most people that were voting no were definitely voting no which is a clear sign that they understood what was on the ballot and they didn’t like it.”
Willard counters that the historic amount of money raised against Issue 2 was used to convince people to, in his words, vote against their own interests.
“Tonight solves nothing when it comes to the out of control drug prices that people have to deal with every day of their lives,” Willard said. “We want to lower drug prices, so we’re going to take this to other states and we will eventually be victorious.”
The future of drug price reform
This is the second failure for the Drug Price Relief Act. Last year drug companies spent more than $100 million in California, where the proposal lost by six points. But Willard says the idea isn’t dead – supporters will try to pass it next in South Dakota and Washington, D.C. But with the lopsided results in Ohio, does he think this is a big win for drug companies?
“No, no I think the drug companies are in hiding,” Willard said. “They stayed in the shadows during this entire campaign. They created a phony corporation so they didn’t even have to put their company’s name on the checks that they wrote to fund this effort.”
Butland and Steiner say this wasn’t about the drug companies, but instead was about their claim that people would see their health care costs go up. Steiner adds that the sponsor of the issue, Michael Weinstein, founder of the Aids Healthcare Foundation, never gathered input from Ohio’s medical groups and other organizations before putting the language on the ballot.
“Everybody involved in the health care system wants to participate in the decisions that are made in that health care system, and they probably should,” Steiner said. “We’ve seen what happens in Washington. We’ve seen what happens in other places when the people that know the most aren’t involved in the decisions.”
Issue 2 would’ve been an initiated statute, creating state law. The last initiated statute to pass was the indoor smoking ban in 2006.