House 340B Hearing Set for Oct. 11

by Admin | October 10, 2017 10:15 am

[1]October 5, 2017—The House Energy & Commerce oversight subcommittee is holding a second hearing on the 340B drug discount program[2] on Oct. 11.

The subcommittee will hear testimony from executives at health center networks in North and South Carolina, health systems in Maryland and Georgia, and a Wisconsin HIV clinic. Four of the five providers got letters from the committee[3] last month requesting information about how they use their 340B savings to benefit patients.

The Health Resources and Services Administration, the Government Accountability Office, and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General testified at the first 340B hearing on July 18. Lawmakers generally expressed support for the program. Some, however, questioned whether there needs to be more control and oversight over how 340B savings are used.

“It’s good the E&C subcommittee will hear first-hand how patients benefit when hospitals can buy medicines for less through the 340B program,” said Ted Slafsky, President and Chief Executive Officer of 340B Health, the association of hospitals and health systems in the drug discount program. “Hospitals use the money they save through 340B to provide free or affordable medicine to patients and to help pay for specialized services that are critical to low-income patients but often underpaid. They also help 340B hospitals shoulder the huge burden of uncompensated care – $23.7 billion in 2014.”

“For many rural hospitals, 340B savings are the difference between staying open or closing their doors,” he continued. “We hope these facts are underscored during the hearing.”

The pharmaceutical industry has been promoting the false narrative that hospital eligibility for 340B should to be pegged to charity care only. 340B Health counters that a more complete picture of the financial pressures hospitals face treating low-income patients requires a broader review of uncompensated and unreimbursed care, including:

• Charity care: services for which a hospital did not receive or expect to receive payment because the hospital determined a patient could not pay for the services

• Bad debt: services that are often indistinguishable from charity care for which hospitals expected to be paid but were not reimbursed

• Underpayments from public payers: shortfalls in reimbursement from Medicaid and other state and local indigent care programs that do not cover hospital costs

340B Health also points out that a hospital’s level of care to low-income patients can also be measured by looking at the hospital’s caseload of low-income patients and the types of specialized services it provides that are critical to low-income patients but are often underpaid.

Hospitals also are among the most transparent of all organizations, and the data available show that 340B hospitals devote significant resources to low-income patients for which they are not compensated, the group says.

Hospitals report their costs and charges to HHS through Medicare Cost Reports, and non-profit hospitals must report various categories of revenue spent to serve low-income patients and communities at large to the IRS, 340B Health observes. These existing federal reporting requirements show the high levels of care 340B hospitals provide to low-income patients for which they do not get paid or are underpaid, it says.

Source URL: https://340binformed.org/2017/10/house-340b-hearing-set-for-oct-11/

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