A Personal Look at Some of the Nation’s Top 340B Lawyers

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Do you think you know Powers Law?  You may know that Powers has represented 340B safety net hospitals, Ryan White clinics, community health centers as well as state and local governments and retail pharmacies since the 340B program’s inception in 1992.  You may also know that Powers has a strong reputation for compliance work, 340B-related litigation, and building coalitions to advocate effectively for the 340B program.  What you don’t know about us may surprise you.

Bill von Oehsen, JD

  • Bill played a key role in helping to enact the 340B program in 1992, as well as to expand the law in 2010 under the Affordable Care Act to include additional safety net hospitals as covered entities and to establish numerous program integrity requirements.
  • Bill helped to establish 340B Health, an advocacy organization of more than 1,400 public and private nonprofit hospitals participating in the 340B program. He also helped organize the 340B Coalition, an organization of a dozen national associations whose members include most of the covered entities in the U.S.
  • Known by some as the “godfather” of 340B, Bill has established Powers as one of the top drug pricing practices in the nation.
  • Bill’s nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the 340B program inspired Powers’ popular “Hot Topics Trivia” contest that we’ve hosted for several years at 340B Coalition conferences.

Bill has been a regular presence at 340B events and conferences ever since the first national gathering, hosted over 25 years ago.

Barbara Straub Williams, JD

  • Barbara has extensive experience in assisting health care providers understand and navigate complex regulatory schemes including the 340B program, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement and certification, and anti-kickback rules.  
  • Barbara has acted as co-counsel in litigation against HRSA to require it to enforce the contract pharmacy program and represents clients before the Provider Reimbursement Review Board.  She has assisted clients in making disclosures to the HHS Office of Inspector General, the Office of Pharmacy Affairs and other federal and state government entities.
  • Barbara thrives on diving into the details to help her clients find practical strategies to address complex issues.
  • Barbara has practiced law since 1985 except for a three year hiatus during which she lived on a sailboat outside the country. 

Here is Barbara going through the Panama Canal. They put the small boats in the same lock with the freighters like the one looming in the back.  The Dutch fellow she is with volunteered to be a “line handler” on their boat.  The Panama Canal required that you have a minimum number of people on board to secure lines that the folks on the sides of the canal threw.

Peggy Tighe, JD

  • Peggy’s lobbying, coalition building, advocacy, and grassroots expertise has propelled two organizations to national prominence for stakeholder engagement to protect and preserve the 340B program.   
  • Peggy serves as Legislative Counsel to Ryan White Clinics for 340B (RWC-340B), a national organization of HIV/AIDS grantees and sub-grantees in the 340B program that, among other things, successfully fought back against Congressional action in 2017-2018 that would have decimated the 340B program. 
  • Peggy spent several years fighting against state laws that would harm the 340B safety net (most recently in New York) and writing/editing legislation that would prohibit discriminatory reimbursement in several states and at the federal level. 
  • Peggy also works closely with Community Voices for 340B (CV340B), the only national, grassroots organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the 340B program for all types of covered entity stakeholders.
  • Peggy is known for making the complex simple, most recently in Zoom calls, where she is sometimes tugged away from the camera by her 120lb dog Fergus.

Peggy and her amazing smile on a Zoom call.

Megan La Suer, MHA, JD

  • Megan has a wide range of experience working on 340B compliance and advocacy issues.  Megan was a key part of the Powers team that filed the first lawsuit against HHS to protect the 340B contract pharmacy program.
  • Megan specializes in issues related to telehealth, state Medicaid policy and licensure requirements, and HIPAA privacy and security rules.  Megan is also a member of Powers’ Nonprofit Organization practice and assists medical and professional associations on regulatory and transactional matters.
  • Megan works closely with members of RWC-340B and CV340B to advocate for the protection and preservation of the 340B program.  Megan monitors state legislation on discriminatory reimbursement, tracks developments in litigation related to the contract pharmacy program and keeps members and clients up to date on all things 340B.
  • An Iowa native and avid Hawkeye fan, Megan has always wanted to live in DC and loves being in the middle of where all the health policy “action” takes place.

Mark Ogunsusi, PharmD, JD

  • Mark is both a lawyer and a pharmacist who focuses on regulatory matters involving pharmaceutical pricing, pharmacy benefit management laws, and state pharmacy laws.
  • Mark’s background in pharmacy informs his legal work on all aspects of the 340B program, including covered entity registrations, contract pharmacy arrangements, patient eligibility determinations, duplicate discount issues, drug inventory management, eligibility requirements, third party vendor arrangements, auditable records requirements, and other 340B program matters.
  • Mark, along with Bill and Peggy, is playing an instrumental role to stop PhRMA in the only existing litigation where PhRMA is challenging a state law (Arkansas) that seeks to protect the 340B program at the state level from drug companies’ unilateral limitations on contract pharmacy arrangements.
  • Mark grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.  He spent many of his childhood years studying in the back room of an in-house pharmacy of a safety-net clinic where his father was a pharmacist.  Beginning in middle school, Mark spent consecutive summers working at Grady Memorial Hospital, one of the preeminent safety-net hospitals in the Southeastern United States.

Mark and Megan doing their magic at the 340B Coalition conference.

To learn more, visit our website at www.PowersLaw.com.

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