Community Health Centers' Deal Walks PhRMA Fox into 340B Henhouse, says AHF
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) strongly condemns the new 10-point plan and partnership the drug industry has cooked up with community health centers as a dangerous deal designed to destroy the 340B Drug Pricing Program, a vital part of the U.S. health care safety net.
"PhRMA set a trap, and the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) walked right into it. Health centers are doing a deal with the devil, giving PhRMA the means to kill 340B," said Michael Weinstein, president of AHF. "NACHC, selfishly, has thrown all nonprofit 340B providers, hospitals, and clinics under the bus. This is a betrayal by the community clinics that invites the fox into the henhouse. We will fight this unholy alliance fiercely."
Under the new PhRMA/NACHC deal, community health centers would be allowed to use contract pharmacies to fill 340B prescriptions, and, in exchange, drug companies could expand their profit margins and place unworkable restrictions on all other covered entities. Other damaging elements of the deal include the following:
- Savings from the discount no longer need to be invested back into healthcare services.
- Safety net providers would have a harder time to qualifying as 340B-covered entities.
- Satellite operations, called ?child sites,' could not use savings from the 340B program.
- A new bureaucracy would help drug companies separate Medicaid prescription drug claims from 340B claims.
- Nonprofit providers who use the 340B program will have more cumbersome reporting requirements.
- Drug companies get more patient data from nonprofit providers with no requirement to disclose the data they use as a basis for their price hikes and get to raise prices indiscriminately.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 1.7 million clients in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare
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