HHS cracks down on As­traZeneca, Eli Lil­ly, No­var­tis, No­vo Nordisk and Sanofi for lim­it­ing ac­cess to dis­count­ed drugs un­der the 340B pro­gram

Last sum­mer, some of the world’s top drug­mak­ers took mat­ters in­to their own hands and tried to halt the bal­loon­ing of a fed­er­al health pro­gram that re­quires the com­pa­nies to of­fer steep dis­counts on their prod­ucts to con­tract phar­ma­cies work­ing with hos­pi­tals that pri­mar­i­ly treat low-in­come pa­tients.

Com­pa­nies like No­var­tis and Eli Lil­ly raised con­cerns that the pro­gram, known as 340B, had grown be­yond what it was ini­tial­ly tasked to do. They al­so ex­plained how the pro­gram was lin­ing the pock­ets of these hos­pi­tals. The hos­pi­tals, mean­while, de­nounced the uni­lat­er­al moves by the drug­mak­ers to stop of­fer­ing the low­ered prices to con­tract phar­ma­cies and com­plained to HHS’ Health Re­sources and Ser­vices Ad­min­is­tra­tion (HRSA), which runs the 340B pro­gram.

Endpoints News

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.