April 16, 2014—The chairman and four members of the Senate Select Committee on Aging are urging the White House budget chief—who also is President Obama’s choice to be the next head of the Department of Health and Human Services—to uphold the “original core tenet” that the 340B program’s purpose is “to help safety net providers reach more patients and provide more comprehensive services.” [ms-protect-content id=”2799″]
Committee Chairman Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and members Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Elizabeth Warren (D- Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and John Walsh (D-Mont.) made the appeal in an April 14 letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Matthews Burwell and Health Resources and Services Administration Administrator Mary Wakefield. President Obama chose Burwell to succeed Kathleen Sebelius, who announced last week that she was stepping down as HHS Secretary. Burwell is in the unusual position of heading OMB and being tapped to head HHS at the very time that OMB is reviewing HHS’s 340B “mega-reg.”
The senators said they were writing “to recognize the significant contribution of the 340B Drug Pricing Program … and express our strong hope that any proposed rule or guidance addressing which patients can access drugs through the 340B program upholds the original core tenet of the program—to help safety net providers reach more patients and provide more comprehensive services.”
“To that end, as a part of any revisions to the 340B patient definition, we urge you to retain the emphasis on the provision of health care services being consistent with the qualifying grant funding,” they continued. “We also ask that you avoid policies which could be interpreted to limit the types of drugs that can be purchased or dispensed under the program.”
“The resources provided through the 340B program have a direct impact on augmenting patient care throughout the country and will continue to play an integral role in the future in supporting the mission of safety net providers who serve low-income, uninsured, and underinsured patients,” they wrote. “Accordingly, as HRSA continues its efforts at improving oversight of the program, including the development of regulations around which patients can access 340B priced products, it is essential that any rulemaking not lose sight of the statutory intent of the 340B program and render a person who would absolutely be considered a patient in the common sense definition of the word a non-patient under the program.” [/ms-protect-content]