The House Energy & Commerce Committee passed two bills today to impose 340B program reporting requirements on hospitals and other health care providers.
They were among 19 health care, telecommunications, and energy bills that the committee marked up today.
It voted 29-22 to pass Rep. Larry Bucshon’s (R-Ind.) 340B program transparency bill, H.R. 3290, that would require 340B disproportionate share hospitals to report data about patients who get 340B drugs, spending on charity care, public-payer reimbursement shortfalls, 340B savings (defined as the difference between either GPO or wholesale cost for a drug and the drug’s 340B ceiling price), and how those savings are used. Bucshon’s bill would let the Secretary of Health and Human Services impose reporting requirements on other types of covered entities.
Just one Democrat voted for it—Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.). Peters teamed up with Bucshon in late 2017 on a bill that would have been even tougher on 340B DSH hospitals.
A late addition to Bucshon’s bill would make hospitals noncompliance punishable by civil monetary penalties.
The committee next voted 49-0 on H.R. 3561, a hospital and health insurer transparency bill with a section that addresses billing Medicaid managed care organizations or their pharmacy benefit managers for prescription drugs. It will require Medicaid MCOs or PBMs to pay ingredient cost plus a dispensing fee for drugs. MCOs and PBMs “may” pay more for drugs “furnished by” 340B covered entities, it says. If they do, entities have to tell the federal government annually the total amount of payments they get above their acquisition costs. The government would have to make the financial disclosures public.
Whether or when the full House might take up the bills is unknown. Of the two, H.R. 3561 has the better odds of progressing. Provider groups are expected to keep working to get favorable changes made to it. If the House passes one or both, the Senate will have to do likewise. President Biden would get the final say.
Several hospital groups sent the committee’s Republican and Democratic leaders a joint letter yesterday urging them to oppose Bucshon’s bill and to support amending H.R. 3561’s 340B language. Health center and 340B grantee entity groups also are lobbying on H.R. 3561.
We will report more on the bills tomorrow.
