Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle signed into law a state budget with a dispensing fee increase but vetoed the bill?s hold-harmless provision protecting pharmacists against AMP.
Pharmacists praised the passage of the 2007-09 biennial Wisconsin state budget, which increased the dispensing fee by 50 cents, but they expressed frustration that governor Jim Doyle used his line-item veto to remove another provision that would have offset the expected impact of the average manufacturer price rule for Medicaid. The dispensing-fee hike actually rolls back a state rule that deducts 50 cents from reimbursements under the state-run Medical Assistance and BadgerCare programs. Doyle's veto of the hold harmless provisions was not