States, virtually all of them, have a constitutional requirement to operate on a balanced budget.
John Kitzhaber
I don't want to suggest that controlling pharmaceutical costs is the answer to what ails the U.S. health care system. It isn't.
The reason prescription drugs are so important at the state level is because they're eating up the Medicaid budget.
First of all, pharmaceutical costs are the single fastest-growing part of our health care budget.
