September 22, 2014—Congress passed and President Obama signed a bill late last week to keep the federal government open through Dec. 11. [ms-protect-content id=”2799″] Called a continuing resolution, lawmakers needed to pass it because they have approved no regular appropriations bills for the new fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. If they hadn’t acted, the government would have been forced to shut down, as it did for 17 days in October 2013. The bill keeps the Office of Pharmacy Affairs level-funded at a spending rate of $10.2 million per year.
Approving the continuing resolution was the last thing Congress did before breaking for the November elections. Republicans are widely expected to remain in control of the House but it is unclear which party will be the majority in the Senate. It’s also uncertain how Congress will choose to fund 340B and other federal health program for the rest of fiscal 2015 – a regular Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill, an omnibus appropriations bill, or a series of continuing resolutions.
In July, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education released a draft federal health spending bill for fiscal 2015 that would provide $10.2 million in appropriated funds for 340B, plus another $7 million if Congress votes to authorize a 0.1 percent user fee on all 340B purchases. Congress has mulled a 340B user fee in past years but the idea has never gained wide support. The President has also proposed a user fee in recent budgets.
Senate appropriators said once again in the report accompanying their draft spending bill that, “more than an individual discount program, the 340B program was designed to help safety-net providers maintain, improve, and expand patient access to healthcare services generally.”
Last week, Democrats on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education released their own fiscal 2015 draft spending bill. They said they were frustrated with the Republican majority for not bringing a bill to the subcommittee for a vote for the second straight year. The House Democrats’ bill did not come with a table spelling out exactly how much it would have given OPA. It did, however, include 340B user-fee language identical to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee’s draft bill. [/ms-protect-content]