January 30, 2014—Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a driving force behind the 340B program’s creation and one of its strongest defenders, has decided not to seek reelection in the fall and will retire at the end of this year. [ms-protect-content id=”2799″]
As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment in 1992, Waxman successfully advocated for the inclusion of disproportionate share hospitals in the bipartisan legislation that created the 340B drug discount program. He later supported bipartisan language extending 340B eligibility to children’s hospitals in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Waxman was a co-sponsor of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, an early template for the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Its language authorizing 340B’s expansion to rural and free-standing cancer hospitals eventually made its way into the final health care reform law.
As chairman of the full Energy and Commerce Committee, he helped shepherd ACA through Congress. Later in 2010, help helped pass a bipartisan bill that restored the ability of children’s hospitals to purchase orphan drugs at 340B-discounted prices.
In addition to being a lead author of the 340B statute, Waxman either wrote or played a key role in enacting the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, the Ryan White Care Act, the Generic Drug Act, the Orphan Drug Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“There is not one fight over the past 30 years, whether it was to assure that low-income individuals could access critical drug therapies or that safety-net providers had the resources to provide quality care, that Henry Waxman has not led in the House of Representatives,” said Marsha Simon, who was a key aide to then-Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee Chairman Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) during the passage of the 340B statute and is now a principal of a Washington health care policy firm.
“Henry Waxman played a critical role in the creation of the 340B drug discount program that enables health care providers to provide high-quality, affordable care to low-income and uninsured patients,” said Ted Slafsky, President and CEO of Safety Net Hospitals for Pharmaceutical Access, which represents hospitals enrolled in 340B. “Thanks to his leadership and the work of a bipartisan group of lawmakers, the program remains vitally important two decades after its creation. Our member hospitals and their patients are grateful to Mr. Waxman for his commitment to important health care causes and we hope we have an opportunity to continue to benefit from his expertise and passion in the future.”
Waxman’s retirement announcement came almost one year to the day following that of another 340B champion, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). [/ms-protect-content]