{"id":26565,"date":"2026-02-11T09:38:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=26565"},"modified":"2026-02-11T09:54:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:54:06","slug":"house-energy-commerce-committee-hearing-on-healthcare-affordability-offers-opportunity-to-advance-real-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/26565\/house-energy-commerce-committee-hearing-on-healthcare-affordability-offers-opportunity-to-advance-real-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"House E&C Health Subcommittee Hearing on Healthcare Affordability Offers Opportunity to Advance Real Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, the House Energy & Commerce Committee holds a hearing<\/a> entitled “Lowering Health Care Costs for All Americans: An Examination of the Prescription Drug Supply Chain” that offers another opportunity to advance substantive reform.<\/p>\n

CFIF applauds the Committee, and members Brett Guthrie (R – Kentucky) and Morgan Griffith (R – Virginia), for their collective efforts on this issue of affordability.\u00a0 In that effort, we also continue our own effort to emphasize the importance of avoiding destructive government price controls<\/a>, which only serve to make lifesaving pharmaceuticals less available to Americans, not more available.\u00a0 It’s also critical to maintain focus on ongoing reform in the pharmaceutical benefit manager (PBM) arena, which actually can bring improvement, as we’ve consistently emphasized:<\/p>\n

For those unfamiliar, Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) amount to middlemen<\/a> that control prescription drugs for millions of Americans.\u00a0 A majority of Americans receive health insurance through employer plans or government programs such as Medicare, which in turn cover prescription drugs through PBMs.\u00a0 Those PBMs negotiate with drug companies and pay pharmacies, but throughout the process determine the drugs that insured patients may obtain and at what cost.<\/p>\n

The problem is that PBMs operate in such an opaque and complex manner that they\u2019re able to inflate drug costs while claiming to be working to reduce them.\u00a0 It has reached a point where even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now investigating<\/a> PBMs\u2019 role in driving up costs for Americans.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another critical arena offering potential reform? What’s known as Section 340B:<\/p>\n

\n

At issue is Section 340B<\/a><\/strong> of the Public Health Service Act passed in 1992 to help hospitals \u2013 especially those serving low-income and uninsured populations \u2013 to purchase pharmaceuticals from drug manufacturers at significantly discounted prices.<\/p>\n

In theory, those savings for hospitals should have translated into lower out-of-pocket prices for everyday patients by being passed along to them.<\/p>\n

Since 1992, however, real-world practice has not lived up to that laudable Congressional intent.\u00a0 As the number of participating hospitals and pharmacies has grown, oversight has failed<\/a><\/strong> to keep pace with the scale and complexity of the program.<\/p>\n

As a result, hospitals and their partner pharmacies have increasingly exploited the 340B program in ways that bring significant revenue streams for themselves, but no demonstrable benefits for the consumers who were the law\u2019s original intended beneficiaries.\u00a0 Multiple studies examining the growing discrepancy have exposed<\/a><\/strong> how hospitals and their partners generate tens of billions of dollars each year from 340B drug sales.\u00a0 Rarely, however, have those funds been passed on to patients in the form of lower drug prices or even reinvested into better patient care.<\/p>\n

Outrageously, some hospitals even charged full prices to patients for pharmaceuticals discounted under the 340B program, and then pocketed<\/a><\/strong> the difference rather than pass them on to consumers as designed.\u00a0 The federal agency in charge of administering the 340B program has highlighted<\/a><\/strong> those transparency concerns and an inability to accurately audit the program in practice.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, since 1992 the 340B program hasn\u2019t fulfilled its intended aspirations.\u00a0 Instead of reducing drug costs for patients, it has too often incentivized hospital profiteering, distorted healthcare behavior and ultimately raised costs rather than lowering them.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Our message is clear:\u00a0 Keep up the positive work, and focus on reform where it works, while avoiding the catastrophic potential pitfalls of drug price controls, whether through so-called “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) or other iterations, or erosion of strong patent rights<\/a> that make American pharmaceutical innovation the envy of the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, the House Energy & Commerce Committee holds a hearing entitled “Lowering Health Care Costs for All Americans: An Examination of the Prescription Drug Supply Chain” that offers another opportunity to advance substantive reform. CFIF applauds the Committee, and members Brett Guthrie (R – Kentucky) and Morgan Griffith (R – Virginia), for their collective efforts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5292,1251,861,1684,2872,5023],"class_list":["post-26565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-340b","tag-drugs","tag-healthcare","tag-innovation","tag-ip","tag-pbms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26565"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26570,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26565\/revisions\/26570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}