HHS backs down in le­gal fight over drug dis­count pro­gram with As­traZeneca, Eli Lil­ly, No­vo and Sanofi

HHS’ Of­fice of the Gen­er­al Coun­sel late Fri­day with­drew an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion from De­cem­ber “in light of on­go­ing con­fu­sion” about its scope and im­pact, and which said drug­mak­ers are ob­lig­at­ed to de­liv­er cov­ered out­pa­tient drugs to con­tract phar­ma­cies un­der the drug dis­count pro­gram known as 340B.

The backpedal from HHS comes as drug­mak­ers in­clud­ing As­traZeneca, Eli Lil­ly, No­vo Nordisk and Sanofi sued HHS af­ter the de­part­ment threat­ened to fine them af­ter they placed re­stric­tions on which en­ti­ties could re­ceive deeply dis­count­ed prices for cer­tain drugs, which orig­i­nal­ly had been for unin­sured and vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, but now in­clud­ed an in­creas­ing num­ber of hos­pi­tals’ con­tract phar­ma­cies. HHS said those re­stric­tions placed by the drug­mak­ers were in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the 340B statute, while the drug­mak­ers said the num­ber of new con­tract phar­ma­cies has bal­looned in re­cent years and dri­ven up their costs.

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