BIP Winter 2025

Healthcare is Local

Virginia turns momentum into influence With a legislative win under its belt and new collaborations ahead, NABIP Virginia is proving how persistence and partnership can shape real transparency in healthcare.

NABIP Virginia heads into 2026 with a plan to keep the legislative engine running and widen the circle of collaborators across the commonwealth. “Legislative is fully energized,” says Hetal Vora Seawell, president of NABIP Virginia. “We’re positioning ourselves as a trusted voice for policymakers, agency partners and other stakeholders, and we’re building relationships to match.” That approach paid off in 2025. Working with Delegate Mark Sickles and lobbyist Christopher West of Jackson West Consulting, the chapter of a pharmacy transparency bill that tightens reporting requirements for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). A key Virginia-specific addition: bringing pharmacy services administrative organizations (PSAOs) — the intermediaries that represent many independent pharmacies — under the same reporting umbrella. “They’re the middlemen to the middlemen,” says Devon Travis, director of compliance and legislative affairs at Scott Insurance. “If transparency is the goal, they have to be included.” [For more on NABIP’s role in the pharmacy legislation, see the Spring 2025 issue of bip , p. 8.] The chapter is leveraging that win to push further on transparency and data access. A Virginia Health Information (VHI) representative joined the chapter’s legislative call to discuss next steps. Leaders are also exploring a proposal to lower the employer size threshold for receiving de-identified claims data to 50, aligning access with helped secure unanimous passage in both chambers

Central Virginia members attending NABIP’s Capitol Conference gather in front of the office of Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA) on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

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