Rep. Beth Van Duyne: Congress can save seniors’ access to medications before it’s too late

DATE: October 10, 2025

Seniors in nursing homes across the country depend on round-the-clock care and medications, perhaps more than any other American patient population. In turn, the nursing homes and assisted living facilities that care for them depend on a small number of specialized long-term care (LTC) pharmacies to ensure their patients have access to the prescription meds they need.

But what would happen if those essential LTC pharmacies suddenly disappeared? Nursing homes, unable to simply turn to retail pharmacies for the highly specialized services required, would be out of compliance with federal law. Many long-term care facilities in rural areas would have no viable pharmacy alternatives, forcing them to close and move patients far away from their families.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a “what if” scenario. It’s a looming American long-term care crisis that Congress must work to avert before it’s too late.

As a Congresswoman who cares deeply for the physical and fiscal health of her constituents, I support polices to lower the cost of prescription drugs. However, recent policy changes included in former President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) pose a severe—even if unintended—threat to LTC pharmacies and their patients. That’s why I sponsored the Preserving Patient Access to Long-term Care Pharmacies Act (H.R. 5031) to do something about it.

The unique impacts on LTC pharmacies were not considered in the IRA’s mandate for Medicare to negotiate the prices of certain prescription medications. And that’s unfortunate because these essential LTC pharmacies provide medications to an extremely vulnerable patient population almost entirely covered by the Medicare Part D program.

The result is that when new Medicare negotiated drug prices take effect on January 1, 2026, LTC pharmacies will face significantly reduced reimbursement rates on many of the medications most prescribed to seniors in long-term care. This will immediately create an unsustainable situation for LTC pharmacies across the country, forcing many out of business and leaving nursing homes and their patients without the essential services only LTC pharmacies can provide.

Our aging population is growing. Now is not the time to reduce nursing home care and launch America into a long-term care crisis. The bipartisan Preserving Patient Access to Long-Term Care Pharmacies Act will protect access to essential medications and pharmacy services for seniors and other long-term care residents in nursing homes, assisted living, and similar facilities. It will ensure that LTC pharmacies can continue serving nursing home and assisted living residents by establishing a temporary supply fee for negotiated Part D drugs.

This critical LTC pharmacy fix, modeled after an existing Medicare Part B program, would establish a temporary $30 supply fee for each prescription dispensed under Medicare negotiated prices in 2026 and 2027. This is the only way many LTC pharmacies will survive the next two years.

LTC pharmacies are a lifeline for millions of seniors and their families. If we fail to act before January 1, 2026, many of these pharmacies will be forced to close their doors, leaving nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and vulnerable patients without the care they rely on. H.R. 5031 provides a critical fix now, before a crisis hits, so seniors can continue to access the safe, reliable pharmacy services they deserve.

I am grateful to the many co-sponsors who have already signed on in support, and I encourage all my fellow lawmakers to join me in this important effort and help get this lifesaving legislation across the finish line before the end of 2025.

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Representative Beth Van Duyne proudly serves Texas’ 24^th Congressional District.