The Drug Reduction Program is a lifeline for CA patients

By Ben Johnson, especially for CalMatters

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Guest Comment written by

Re: California’s rural health care crisis is also a chance for transparency

Julie Gill Shufield’s recent piece attacks a low-cost drug program that sustains health
care for California’s most vulnerable residents not only malign proven and
an invaluable resource for low-income Californians, but it also throws up ugly and unfounded ones
defamation of public hospitals.

More than 30 years ago, Congress created the 340B Drug Pricing Program to provide
struggling safety-net hospitals with relief from high prescription drug costs to be able to
provide better care for their patients.

The program has stood the test of time, allowing hospitals to take advantage of reduced costs for
medicines not only to transfer the savings to the vulnerable groups of the population, but also to invest
in programs that expand access to care and provide vital services unavailable elsewhere.

Here in California, 340B directly helps those struggling to access critical health care
services through various programs, including: free health screenings for low-income people
and uninhabited population; co-payment assistance, financial navigation services and free
drugs for uninsured patients; emergency financial assistance, including medication
vouchers and post-hospital care for non-admitted patients; and community health education.

And yet in her Comment from April 10, Gill Shufield claims the savings are not being passed on to patients and hospitals are “pocketing the difference”.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Hospitals use the 340B savings to invest in them
patient care, plain and simple. For example, one hospital in Northern California – with
the support of 340B — resulted in a resident oncologist to provide regional care
patients at risk of cancer in rural communities. Another hospital operates in the East Bay
an AIDS center that offers critical health services, education and treatment to
thousands of patients every year.

The misleading claims don’t stop there. The article notes that 35% of
340B hospitals are located in medically underserved areas. But the 340B program is
designed to help people, not map regions. Participation in the 340B program is
limited to only those hospitals that disproportionately care for vulnerable populations—
people covered by Medi-Cal, people experiencing homelessness, people without any
insurance to all and rural residents. These people live in every community in ours
country and they are the ones 340B helps every day.

A third claim repeats the tired and debunked trope that consolidation between hospitals
deprives people of access to care and services or enriches hospitals in some way (48% of
California hospitals that participate in the 340B program lose money every day they provide care
for patients).

In fact, integration between hospitals helps reduce healthcare costs while maintaining them
access to care. Research has found that operating costs are down by around 5-6% of a
on a bed basis after acquisition. Additional research also finds significance
savings. At the same time, integration is often the only way to maintain access to care
patients in rural and underserved communities—there are many examples of health
systems that have taken over struggling hospitals on the verge of closing and then helped them along
remain open. And research shows that rural mergers are associated with quality
improvementincluding reducing the risk of mortality in certain conditions.
.
Undermining the 340B program will only serve to line the pockets of multinationals,
multibillion dollar pharmaceutical conglomerates. Instead, we should start with what
patients and communities need, and recognize that this program supports a healthy safety net
centers, hospitals and clinics so they can keep their doors open and their patients
Healthy.

For low-income Californians, many of whom are uninsured or underinsured and
sufferers of chronic illness, critical health care providers simply would not
be there to take care of them without the support of 340B.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.