Hospitals staying true to Congress' drug discounts
By Cassie Sauer / For The Herald
Recent attacks on the 340B Drug Pricing Program claim hospitals are exploiting it, but that narrative collapses under basic scrutiny. The program is doing exactly what Congress designed it to do: help safety-net providers care for vulnerable patients as drug prices and drug company profits soar.
Created in 1992, 340B allows qualified nonprofit hospitals, health centers and HIV clinics serving low-income patients to stretch limited resources by purchasing medications at discounted prices from pharmaceutical companies.
Its growth reflects explicit federal policy choices, including the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of eligibility and regulatory decisions that allow patients to access medications closer to home. Rising drug prices and newer, extraordinarily expensive, life-preserving therapies have made the program more important, not more suspect.
What has changed is not hospital behavior, but the aggressiveness of pharmaceutical companies seeking to limit the discounts they are legally required to provide. For-profit drug manufacturers now refuse to provide some drugs at the 340B discounted price; including improved cancer treatments, drugs for HIV and mental health medications. New demands for extensive data submissions are bogging down hospitals, while drug companies withhold medications from contracted pharmacies that carry specialty drugs in local communities.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-hosptials-staying-true-to-congress-drug-discounts/