The fox is guarding the henhouse.
Drug companies are imposing their own rules on the 340B drug pricing program — demanding
extensive private patient claims data from safety-net hospitals and threatening to withhold legally
required 340B discounts when hospitals don’t comply.
There’s one big problem: Congress never gave drug companies the authority to make these rules.
340B Is the Law
Congress created 340B to require participating drug companies to provide discounted medicines
to eligible safety-net hospitals and clinics in exchange for access to the lucrative Medicare and
Medicaid drug markets.
The law does not give these companies the authority to impose sweeping new reporting
requirements that threaten those discounts. Yet a growing number of drugmakers are acting as
their own regulators — deciding what information hospitals must provide, determining whether
they have complied, and refusing discounted pricing when they decide they haven’t.
Drug companies should not be able to write the rules, police the rules, and punish hospitals on
their own.
Lost Pricing Hurts Patients
When drug companies withhold 340B pricing, safety-net hospitals must pay more for medicines
and go without vital resources that otherwise support patient care.
340B savings help hospitals maintain services that communities depend on, including cancer
care, behavioral health services, rural care, specialty medications, and other services that
otherwise might be difficult to sustain.
Every dollar drugmakers take away from these hospitals is a dollar that cannot support patients
and communities.
It’s Time to Enforce 340B
Congress wrote the 340B law. Drug companies don’t get to rewrite it.
The administration must enforce the 340B statute and stop drugmakers from threatening access
to legally required discounts based on requirements Congress never authorized.
Congress must hold drug companies accountable and protect safety-net hospitals and the patients
who depend on them.
Tell policymakers: Enforce 340B drug pricing. Protect patient access.