State drug price transparency laws, and what they show

Between Jan. 5 and Sept. 11, 2026, drug manufacturers filed 759 reports with California's Department of Health Care Access and Information about list-price increases that took effect in the first seven months of the year. One hundred eleven of them were for generic drugs. The reports, each covering one package code, are posted in a public dataset the state updates monthly¹.

California's 2017 law was the first of a wave. At least 30 states have since passed some form of drug price transparency law, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy³ (NASHP), which tracks them. The laws require manufacturers, insurers, pharmacy benefit managers and sometimes wholesalers or pharmacies to report prices, price increases, rebates and the reasons behind them.

Most of what these laws produce is wholesale data, aimed at legislators and regulators. Very little of it tells a shopper what a prescription will cost at the counter.

What the transparency laws require

The best-known requirement is a report when a manufacturer raises a drug's wholesale acquisition cost (WAC), the list price to wholesalers, past a set threshold, or launches a new drug above a set price. The thresholds differ from state to state.

In California, a manufacturer must report increases of more than 16 percent above the WAC on Dec. 31 of the calendar year three years earlier, for drugs with a WAC above $40 for a course of therapy, according to the state's data notes¹. Reports are due within a month after the quarter in which the increase took effect. The law also requires 60 days' advance notice of specified increases to registered purchasers such as health plans, and a 3-day notice when certain new drugs enter the California market, HCAI says².

Oregon's 2018 law asks manufacturers to report each year on any drug with a list price of $100 or more for a 30-day supply whose net price rose 10 percent or more in the prior year, according to the state's 2025 annual report⁴. New drugs must be reported if they launch at $950 or more for a 30-day supply, a threshold raised from $670 for drugs introduced on or after Jan. 1, 2025. A 2019 law added 60-day advance notice⁵ of certain increases.

Other states have added reporting by insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. More than 20 states require some reporting on manufacturer rebates paid to pharmacy benefit managers, and about a dozen have laws on the 340B program, NASHP says. Minnesota's 2023 law extended reporting to wholesalers and pharmacies for drugs of "substantial public interest." Not every program lasts. North Dakota repealed its program effective Jan. 1, 2026.

What California's reports show for generics

GxRadar downloaded California's annual datasets for 2019 through 2025 and the 2026 file through September, then counted reports by the federal drug category manufacturers must give. Generics are the "noninnovator multiple source" drugs in Medicaid's terms. The 2026 file uses a simpler brand or generic label.

A few caveats apply. Each report is one National Drug Code, so a single increase on a drug sold in five package sizes can produce five reports. The state notes that the files may include reports below the legal threshold. And reports stop at the list price, which is not what pharmacies pay after discounts. That is why GxRadar tracks the federal survey of pharmacy acquisition costs instead. By that measure, our generic price index stood at 47.4 in October 2026, against 100 in January 2014, a decline of about 53 percent.

The counts still show that some generic list prices go up every year, even in a market where most prices have fallen. For the history behind that, see our pieces on the generic price spikes of 2013 to 2015 and the generics that cost pharmacies more than they did in 2014.

What gets withheld, and the court fight in Oregon

Manufacturers can ask states to keep parts of their reports confidential. Oregon's program said in its 2025 report⁴ it had received more than 3,500 reports since 2019 that claimed at least one data element as a trade secret. In 2024 alone, 535 of 1,120 reports, or 47.8 percent, made such a claim. When staff reviewed 300 new-drug reports, they found 60.7 percent contained information that was not exempt, and some or all of it was published.

Oregon's annual price-increase reporting was also suspended for a time. On Feb. 16, 2024, a federal district court held that the section of Oregon's law requiring those reports violated the First Amendment. In August 2025 a Ninth Circuit panel reversed, holding that the law does not violate the First or Fifth Amendments, and in October 2025 the court denied the industry's request for rehearing, the Oregon report⁴ says. Transparency laws are one of several state approaches, alongside drug affordability boards and price-gouging laws, facing legal challenges from manufacturers, a January 2026 Congressional Research Service sidebar⁹ noted.

What consumers can actually see

For a patient, the most useful disclosure laws are the ones that operate at the pharmacy counter. New York's Education Law requires every pharmacy to keep a retail price list⁶ for the 150 most frequently prescribed drugs on a list compiled by the state board, update it at least weekly, give it "to any person upon request," and post a sign saying the list is available.

Federal law added a narrower protection in 2018. The Patient Right to Know Drug Prices Act⁷ bars group health plans and insurers, and the pharmacy benefit managers working for them, from stopping a pharmacy from telling an enrollee that the cash price is lower than the out-of-pocket cost under the plan. The Know the Lowest Price Act⁸ applied the same rule to Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage drug plans for plan years beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2020. Neither law requires a pharmacist to volunteer the comparison, so asking still matters. Our guides on how to ask for the cash price and when the cash price beats the copay cover the questions, and our script for talking to your pharmacist puts them into words.

State reports can also help indirectly. Insurer filings show how much drug costs push up premiums; plans have reported prescription drugs' share of premium increases ranging from 15.1 percent in California to 23.8 percent in Utah, NASHP says. Oregon invites consumers to report price increases⁵ online, and received 27 such notices in 2025, all from insured patients.

None of these sources gives a reliable counter price for a specific pharmacy. Prices vary between stores for reasons covered in our explainer on why the same generic costs different amounts, and federal benchmarks such as NADAC, explained in what NADAC measures, are the closest public guide to what pharmacies pay.

What to watch

California refreshes its 2026 dataset monthly, so each update adds reports filed since the last one, including any for increases taking effect in the second half of the year. In Oregon, the state holds a public hearing on drug prices each year; its 2025 report was dated Nov. 25 and presented at a Dec. 4 hearing.