Community health centers, healthcare advocacy groups and a pharmaceutical lobby created an alliance aimed at protecting 340B, a drug-pricing program for eligible hospitals. Hospitals aren't a fan of the alliance.
The new group, called the "Alliance to Save America's 340B Program," said in a March 9 news release it was formed to stop large, well-resourced hospitals participating in the program from surprise billing and "predatory debt collection."
The 340B program was created more than 30 years ago, and the service — which offers discounted drugs to hospitals that treat a large proportion of underinsured and uninsured patients — has long been controversial. The new alliance said it hopes to banish these loopholes.
The American Hospital Association dismissed the alliance's standing.
"They can try to call themselves 'Alliance to Save America's 340B Program,' but the drug companies don't want to 'save' the 340B program — they want to end it because it makes a small dent in their sky-high profits," Aimee Kuhlman, vice president for advocacy and grassroots at the AHA, told Becker's. "No amount of Orwellian language can hide the fact that the real victims of this self-interested proposal will be the millions of patients and communities that 340B hospitals serve each day."
"The AHA will continue to fight to protect the 340B program and the patients it benefits against unfounded attacks by big drug companies," Ms. Kuhlman added.
Nonprofit organization 340B Health also dismissed this new alliance: "This proposal comes after 340B hospitals, community health centers, other 340B providers and their patients, [which] have suffered major reductions in 340B from restrictions imposed by major drug manufacturers at community and specialty pharmacies," 340B Health President and CEO Maureen Testoni said in a statement.
Stephen Ubl, CEO and president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America — one of the groups part of the alliance — said "fixing the 340B program has long been a priority for us."
Besides PhRMA, the founding participants of the alliance include the Autoimmune Association; the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations; Black, Gifted, and Whole, a charity that works to boost enrollment and graduation rates among Black men; the Community Oncology Alliance; the Health Choice Network; the National Association of Community Health Centers; the National Consumers League; the National Hispanic Medical Association; the National Grange, an agriculture advocacy group; NCODA, a nonprofit for oncology teams; and OCHIN, a healthcare innovation nonprofit.