Public Policy Solutions said the 340B program has enriched big hospital executives while failing to pass down savings to patients, and praised President Donald Trump's new pilot program aimed at ending what it called the grift.
"For too long, the 340B program has enriched big hospital execs while failing to pass down savings to patients. @POTUS' pilot program aims to end the grift by putting patients, not hospitals' luxurious pet projects, first," Public Policy Solutions wrote on X.
The Trump administration unveiled a pilot program to modernize the 340B Drug Pricing Program, replacing automatic upfront discounts for hospitals with a rebate model for a limited number of drugs so regulators can verify that discounts are reaching patients before the money changes hands. The pilot also responds to years of concerns raised by Congress, the Government Accountability Office and the HHS Office of Inspector General about duplicate discounts and increasingly complex contracting arrangements, according to Breitbart.
The 340B program has grown to roughly $100 billion in discounted drug purchases annually and now includes thousands of covered entities, many of them large academic medical centers and integrated health systems. When the program launched in 1992, Congress anticipated roughly 90 hospitals would participate; more than 2,600 do today, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Federal prosecutors convicted a Haitian national living in Florida for running a $58 million scheme that used the 340B program to bankroll a life of luxury, including a fleet of top-end cars, a mansion near Miami and investment properties, according to Fox News.
Public Policy Solutions is an independent nonprofit organization co-founded by Joe Grogan that advances policy solutions aimed at strengthening national security and promoting economic opportunity. The group has also published op-eds arguing that hospitals are resisting 340B transparency requirements, according to its website.
