As­traZeneca, PhRMA sue Louisiana in fed­er­al court over state 340B drug ac­cess law

As­traZeneca and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal lob­by­ing group PhRMA have filed law­suits against Louisiana in a bid to shut down the state’s law try­ing to ex­pand the fed­er­al 340B pro­gram that sells out­pa­tient drugs at dis­count­ed prices for low-in­come Amer­i­cans.

The law­suits, filed over the past weeks, tar­get the state’s “De­fend­ing Af­ford­able Pre­scrip­tion Drug Costs Act,” al­so known as Act 358. Ac­cord­ing to As­traZeneca’s suit, it would re­quire drug­mak­ers to of­fer 340B-dis­count­ed pric­ing to “an un­lim­it­ed num­ber of con­tract phar­ma­cies.” Many phar­ma com­pa­nies have uni­lat­er­al­ly amend­ed their 340B in­volve­ment be­cause of the un­lim­it­ed use of con­tract phar­ma­cies, which has led to le­gal chal­lenges.

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