12 Jan Businesswire: AHF on New 340B Report – ‘Bought and Paid for by Big Drug Companies!’
“340B Drug Pricing Program advocates from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) stepped up their criticism of Congressional leaders following the release yesterday of a hit-piece from the House Energy and Commerce Committee masquerading as a so-called investigation. “This biased report was bought and paid for by big drug companies whose only interest is further increasing their profits at the expense of safety net providers who care for countless patients across the country,” said Michael Weinstein, President of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
For the past year, Republican members of the Energy & Commerce Committee have been leading a witch hunt at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry and its lobbyists to try to find hints of wrong-doing on the part of safety net providers participating in the 340B Program. The 340B program was enacted by Congress as part of the Veterans Health Care Act of 1992 to allow designated safety net medical providers, called “covered entities,” to purchase prescription outpatient drugs directly from pharmaceutical manufacturers at discounted prices.
As a discount drug program, 340B costs federal taxpayers and the government nothing—the drug price discounts come directly from participating pharmaceutical companies. Congress itself expressed that the goal of the program is ‘to enable [covered entities] to stretch scarce Federal resources as far as possible, reaching more eligible patients and providing more comprehensive services.’
But the very success of the program over the past twenty-five years has made it a target of drug makers.”
