Due
in large part to MS Activists in South Carolina who attended the April 25th Advocacy & Awareness Day at the SC State House and even more that wrote to
their legislative officials legislation exempting biologics from the SC sales tax (H.3747)became law June 18.
MS medications can now be administered in a physician's office without
the additional overhead cost of a sales tax on these expensive, specialty medications. Prior to passage of
H.3747, it was physicians that bore the burden of the tax. Read more on the biologics bill here or follow this link to read the text for yourself.
This past Spring H.3747 was stalled in Senate Finance Committee which is Chaired by Senator Hugh Leatherman of Florence. Senator Leatherman took under strong consideration what the
public had to say and after a month in the Finance committee, the bill passed the Committee and both the House and Senate.
As the Finance Chair, Sen. Leatherman is also the architect of the SC Senate version of the budget. Sen. Leatherman and others like him who worked to ensure the budget was as agreeable and inclusive as possible. In fact, as mentioned in an earlier post, legislators on both sides of the bench were very pleased with this year’s budget, that is, until Governor Haley’s 81 line-item vetoes. Read about the process that Sen. Leatherman uses to develop the budget in his op-ed here in The Times and Democrat.
General information regarding the South Carolina General Assembly and various legislation can be found on the South Carolina Legislature website.
