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Congress should fix drug program

A new analysis from The Moran Company found nearly one in five hospitals in the USA marks up medicine prices 700% or more.

Despite congressional partisanship and gridlock in Washington, D.C., our elected officials need to focus on solving problems that impact needy patients in America.

Roughly 25 years ago, Congress created a program, the 340B Drug Discount Program, to help safety-net clinics and community health centers improve the health of needy communities throughout the country. Unfortunately, some bad actors are taking advantage of the program for their own benefit while communities, including here in Texas, are suffering. Republican Indiana Rep. and Dr. Larry Bucshon and Democratic California Rep. Scott Peters recently introduced legislation, the 340B Protecting Access to Underserved and Safety-Net Entities Act (PAUSE), which is a great first step to provide much-needed fixes to the program.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, ahead of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on 340B, the Alliance for Integrity and Reform of 340B (AIR340B) released a new report with analytics by the Berkeley Research Group (BRG) on Medicare Part B hospital outpatient reimbursements.

Established in 1992, the 340B drug discount program was intended to help health care providers who mainly care for underserved, uninsured or low-income patients.

Helping Louisiana's citizens afford their prescription drugs is a critical issue and one step in that direction would be the passage of U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy's bill to reform the federal 340B Prescription Drug Discount Program.