Lawmakers demand drug companies stop threatening safety-net hospitals
A handful of drug companies have threatened to curtail the discounts they provide to a federal program for safety-net hospitals. Now, a bipartisan group of Democratic U.S. senators is demanding they knock it off.
As STAT’s Ed Silverman reports, it all hinges on the government’s 340B drug discount program, which requires drug makers to offer substantial discounts to hospitals and clinics that serve indigent populations. Earlier this summer, at least five major drug companies threatened to withhold those discounts, alleging that hospitals were violating the program’s rules by employing contract pharmacies to dispense those drugs.
In a letter to the trade group PhRMA, 23 senators wrote that “it is troubling that during a time of deep uncertainty involving access to health care, many of your member companies are taking retaliatory actions against” hospitals and clinics, adding that “this coercive behavior is ultimately most harmful to patients and should be reversed.”
Read more.
As STAT’s Ed Silverman reports, it all hinges on the government’s 340B drug discount program, which requires drug makers to offer substantial discounts to hospitals and clinics that serve indigent populations. Earlier this summer, at least five major drug companies threatened to withhold those discounts, alleging that hospitals were violating the program’s rules by employing contract pharmacies to dispense those drugs.
In a letter to the trade group PhRMA, 23 senators wrote that “it is troubling that during a time of deep uncertainty involving access to health care, many of your member companies are taking retaliatory actions against” hospitals and clinics, adding that “this coercive behavior is ultimately most harmful to patients and should be reversed.”
Read more.
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