OPINION:
Terry Wilcox’s “340B Drug Pricing Program making health care more expensive” (Web, July 28) reads more like a pharmaceutical industry press release than a credible evaluation of the 340B Drug Pricing Program.
That’s no coincidence. Ms. Wilcox’s organization, Patients Rising, has well-documented financial ties to Big Pharma, and this attack is just the latest in a long-running campaign to knowingly misrepresent a program that helps safety-net providers deliver care to vulnerable rural and underserved communities at no cost to the taxpayer.
Let’s be clear: 340B is not the problem. It is one of the last remaining tools that community health providers have to stretch scarce resources and serve patients, regardless of their ability to pay. The real threat to affordable medicine is the drug manufacturers themselves, who set prices arbitrarily high, then try to scapegoat 340B for the very costs they created.
Big Pharma is relentless in its pursuit, with $20.5 million spent on lobbying so far in 2025 by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America alone.
The notion that 340B is inflating health-care costs is a laughable inversion of reality. Drug companies have raised prices with impunity for years. Now Big Pharma is trying to reframe a program designed to counterbalance their profit maximization as the villain. And it’s paying nonprofits like Patients Rising to carry its water, all while raking in record profits and unilaterally refusing to honor 340B discounts through contract pharmacy restrictions and data demands that violate the intent and letter of the 340B law.
Hospitals and clinics that rely on 340B serve low-income patients, provide charity care, cover unreimbursed costs and keep the doors open in rural and underserved communities. Yes, the program should be transparent. Yes, oversight matters. But those are goals 340B stakeholders and policymakers already agree on, and they’re a far cry from the scorched-earth campaign Big Pharma is waging to dismantle 340B altogether.
We should all be asking: Why are billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies so threatened by a discount program for safety-net providers? The answer is simple: 340B cuts into their profit margins. And rather than lower prices for everyone, they’d rather smear the program with
misleading stats and sensationalized anecdotes.
Don’t fall for it. If you want to know who’s really making health care more expensive, just follow the money and the Big Pharma lobbyists behind it.
SHANNON BURGER
President, Ryan White Clinics for 340B Access
CEO, Cempa Community Care
Chattanooga, Tennessee
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