340B Website

Janson Silvers  0:02  
Welcome to health care policy pop. I'm Janson Silvers. It's Tuesday, November 7, 2023.

Robert Popovian  0:10  
Today's pop topics: an easy to use 340 B tracking website. Plus, Senator Mike Braun tells us more about the Promising Pathway Act. We start today with that 340 B website. As a reminder, 340 B is a federal drug pricing program intended to enhance healthcare resources in low income areas. But the question is, are these dollars being put to work for the patient the program is designed to serve. Today the Pioneer Institute is hosting an online webinar at noon for a live demonstration of new features to its 340 B website. Dr. Robert Popovian is a senior visiting Health Policy Fellow at Pioneer Institute. 

We have significantly updated the website and this event and the website is something in which anybody can go and learn about 340 B program, which is again a federal program, which is a fantastic program on the surface. But there's a lot of problems with it. And what the website tries to do is set some transparency on some of the issues that are under undergoing with regards to 340

Janson Silvers  1:16  
Popovian and tells us the kinds of things they track can be accessed by anyone through the site. 

Robert Popovian  1:21  
We were able to look at every hospital institution in this country and track their charitable care towards their revenue for the last over a decade, actually. And anyone can go and take a look at for example, an individual hospital and see how much charity care are they providing as a percentage of revenue in United States that happen to be a 340 B provider. 

Janson Silvers  1:46  
He says the goal is to evaluate if the 340 B program is being used properly or not. 

Robert Popovian  1:52  
What we're trying to do is shed some light about what is the trend line with regards to charity care of all these hospitals that are getting this revenue or the savings through the 340 B program and try to see whether or not the charity care has increased decrease, stayed the same. And people can look at individual hospitals, they look at overall state level, so on and so forth, 

Janson Silvers  2:15  
Popovian on some of the results they're finding. 

Robert Popovian  2:18  
We looked at the poverty level of New York State and looked at were the contract pharmacies in more affluent neighborhoods or in poorer neighborhoods than there's about over 50% more contract pharmacies in the affluent neighborhoods. Well, the intent of this program was to help the poor right and to help institutions to help the poor. And if these contract pharmacies are not located in where the poor people live, it defeats the purpose. 

Janson Silvers  2:43  
The website database is searchable and has many other data points painting a 340 B picture, find a link to today's event and the 340 B website in the show notes.

Patients Rising CEO Terry Wilcox sat down with Senator Mike Braun of Indiana to discuss the Promising Pathway Act. Braun thinks this bill will address many diseases that are left behind. 

Mike Braun  3:10  
So there's a big category diseases that are in the category of not getting enough attention and need a different framework from what the FDA does for other ailments that have more people impacted by it, where you've got lots of drug companies trying to find even better remedies, approaching cures. We weren't even at first base on diseases like ALS and others. 

Janson Silvers  3:37  
Wilcox wanted to know from Braun why he and others in a bipartisan group of senators are so fervent about the bill and why now and this is what he said: 

Mike Braun  3:46  
Something needs to be done to FDA protocol to acknowledge the exceptional nature of these ailments. 

Janson Silvers  3:56  
Hear more from Braun's interviewer in this week's Patients Rising Podcast. That link is in the show notes. Finally today, Patients Rising Now has joined a group of other patient advocacy organizations on a letter calling for strong, meaningful, and accountable PBM reform this year. That's all for today. We're back on Thursday for another health care policy pop a resource of Patient Rising Now. I'm Janson sewers, have a great day.