January 23, 2015—Congress should not scale back the 340B drug discount program in an effort to pay part of the multi-billion-dollar cost of Medicare physician payment reform, the American Hospital Association told a House subcommittee yesterday in written testimony.
Hospitals have faced more than $121 billion in federal spending cuts since 2010 and “now is not the time to further cut payments,” the AHA told the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Health, which held a two-day hearing Jan. 21-22 on paying for a replacement for the Medicare Sustained Growth Rate Formula, aka the doc fix. The federal government should not siphon 340B savings away from hospitals and other providers to raise physicians’ Medicare reimbursement, the AHA said, noting that hospitals employ about one-third of all physicians.
“The AHA opposes any efforts to scale back or reduce the benefits of the 340B program,” the hospital group wrote in its testimony. “The 340B program has a proven track record of decreasing government spending and helping safety-net providers stretch limited resources to increase access to care for the vulnerable patients and communities they serve.”
Groups representing physicians, nurse practitioners, and retired people testified alongside the AHA during the hearing’s second day. There appeared to be a growing consensus among subcommittee members that money to pay for the doc fix might have to come from non-health-care programs.
In its written testimony, AARP urged Congress to consider several prescription drug proposals that it said could save around $150 billion, or roughly the same amount that the doc fix is expected to cost.
AARP’s proposals include:
- providing rebates for drugs provided to Medicare Part D low-income support beneficiaries who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid
- letting the Secretary of Health and Human Services negotiate for lower prescription drug prices
- reducing the exclusivity period for biologic drugs
- prohibiting pay-for-delay agreements between brand-name pharmaceutical maker and generic manufacturers
- stopping Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies from being used to block generic drug and biosimilar product development.