The 340B drug discount program was built on a simple promise: get medicine to patients who need it most at prices they can afford. But as the program has ballooned from $6.6 billion to more than $81 billion in discounted drug purchases, the patients it was designed to help have largely disappeared from the equation. Now, with the Trump administration pushing for transparency, large hospital systems are refusing to show where the money goes. In the Washington Examiner, Joe Grogan makes the case that a program working as intended should have no trouble proving it. Read the full piece here →

From the Washington Examiner, by Joe Grogan:

"Under the 340B program, drug manufacturers provide medicines at steep discounts, which providers are supposed to pass on to vulnerable patients. Instead, large hospitals repeatedly take the manufacturer discount, bill patients and insurers at full price, and pocket the difference. And because the program lacks meaningful reporting requirements, hospitals generally do not have to demonstrate how those savings are spent or whether patients are directly benefiting."

"The hospitals refusing to comply already collect and transmit similar claims data every day to Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurers. And thousands of smaller clinics and health centers have already sent this data to manufacturers, showing that the burden of compliance is far less daunting than large hospitals claim."

"If hospital systems are using 340B discounts exactly as Congress intended, why are they resistant to providing the data that would prove it? And if they are passing savings along to patients, why would a rebate program be any more burdensome than an upfront discount?"

"The 340B program was created to support vulnerable patients, not subsidize hospital acquisition strategies or finance healthcare empires."

"A program that benefits needy patients should have no difficulty demonstrating that success. If 340B is working as intended, hospitals should show the data. And if they do have a problem providing that data, Congress should start asking whether 340B is still serving patients or, instead, funding hospital empires."

Joe Grogan's piece in the Washington Examiner cuts to the heart of a program that has strayed far from its original mission. Read the full commentary here.

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