Congress should put an end to the exploitation of this important safety-net program and put it back on track for the patients it was meant to assist.
PBMs using 340B program to drive profits at patients’ expense
Preferring medicines with higher prices. Blocking access to low-cost generic and biosimilar treatments. Refusing to share savings with patients at the pharmacy counter. Denying people the benefit of patient assistance programs. These are some of the ways pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, game the health care system to maximize profits at patients’ expense. But there is one more PBM scheme that deserves greater scrutiny: exploiting the federal 340B program.
Hospitals that participate in the 340B program contract with pharmacies to dispense the program’s drug prescriptions. Now consider that over 33,000 distinct pharmacies participate in the program, known as contract pharmacies. Thanks to consolidation in the supply chain, PBMs now own the vast majority of pharmacies nationwide and make the largest share of their profits (55%) from their pharmacy business. They use the 340B program to drive that profit.
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Alarmingly, there are federal and state legislative proposals that would allow unfettered use of contract pharmacies — meaning PBMs would continue to siphon money from 340B without guardrails or oversight. This is especially concerning given hospitals’ use of contract pharmacies is not improving access to medicines for patients. These proposals put the financial interests of for-profit corporations ahead of the needs of vulnerable patients.
Instead, Congress should put an end to the exploitation of this important safety-net program and put it back on track for the patients it was meant to assist. Learn more at PhRMA.org/340B.
