Star Tribune: Hospital profit while patients pay

By Kasia Mulligan, Patients Come First’s National Spokesperson

The recent report on Minnesota hospitals netting $1 billion from the 340B drug discount program (“Hospitals received $1B selling discounted drugs at full price,” March 3) confirms what Patients Come First has long warned: a program designed to help vulnerable patients has become a massive, unregulated windfall for hospital balance sheets.

Let’s be clear: The 340B program was created with a noble purpose — allowing safety-net providers to purchase outpatient drugs at significant discounts so they could stretch scarce resources to reach more eligible patients. Instead, as the data shows, Minnesota hospitals are buying drugs at steep discounts and selling them to patients and insurers at full price, pocketing the “spread” with virtually no requirement to pass those savings directly to the people sitting in their waiting rooms.

For the thousands of Minnesotans struggling to afford lifesaving medications, it is galling to see a $1 billion surplus staying within hospital systems while out-of-pocket costs continue to skyrocket. When hospitals act like high-margin pharmacies rather than community anchors, patients lose.

Read the full LTE in the Star Tribune here.