Un­der ‘threat’ of fines, No­var­tis sues HHS over drug pric­ing pro­gram

The bio­phar­ma in­dus­try is not tak­ing the threat of even mod­est civ­il mon­e­tary penal­ties light­ly, as No­var­tis last week sued the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s HHS over plans to as­sess such penal­ties for changes that the com­pa­nies made in re­gard to a small but high-pro­file drug dis­count pro­gram for hos­pi­tals.

Un­der the pro­gram, known as 340B and run by HHS’ Health Re­sources and Ser­vices Ad­min­is­tra­tion, drug­mak­ers are re­quired by law to sell their prod­ucts at heav­i­ly dis­count­ed prices so hos­pi­tals can pro­vide them to low-in­come pa­tients. Al­though the na­tion­al pro­gram is some­where be­tween 8% and 5% of the en­tire US drug mar­ket, bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies have crit­i­cized the bal­loon­ing growth of cer­tain con­tract phar­ma­cies that are now op­er­at­ing on be­half of many of the hos­pi­tals and took ac­tion to halt that growth over the past year.

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.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER