Community healthcare providers around the country are wondering what will happen when the federal 340B prescription drug pricing program as the federal law sundowns.
Recognizing how so many organizations have come to rely on the program, State Senator Jeremy Zellner and other state lawmakers are looking to modify state law to include the protections of 340B, allowing hospitals and community healthcare providers to purchase prescription drugs at a discount. There is proposed legislation, the 340B Prescription Drug Anti-Discrimination Act (S.1913/A.6222)
If the program goes away, Zellner said, families in Western New York will face higher costs, fewer services, and less access to care as the result of greed.
“Big Pharma, big companies are trying to squeeze and make as much money as they possibly can, and we've got to stop that,” said Zellner. “You know, we need people to get their healthcare. We need people to get their medication when they need it.”
The federal program has been in effect since the early 1990s, and Raymond Ganoe, President & CEO of Evergreen Health, said it’s allowed Evergreen to serve people with no other place to go.
“340B has allowed safety net providers like Evergreen to purchase medication at a discount and reinvest those savings directly into patient care at no cost to taxpayers,” said Ganoe. “Let me be clear: 340B is not a bonus; it is a lifeline. Those savings support funding for wraparound services like care coordination, mental health services, nutrition support, transportation, housing, food pantry and outreach that keeps people connected and so much more.”
Ganoe said any effort to limit or weaken 340B would have immediate and harmful consequences for the patients Evergreen serves, and those impacts would fall hardest on the most vulnerable in our communities.
In response, Steven Newmark of the Global Healthy Living Foundation released a statement, suggesting New York's proposed legislation would hand a windfall to hospital systems and contract pharmacies already exploiting the program's flaws.
It reads: “New Yorkers deserve prescription drug laws that put patients over profits – a low bar that S.1913/A.6222 fails to clear. Without meaningful reforms to the 340B program itself, this legislation would be a gift to hospital systems that have already seen historic revenue windfalls as a result of its flaws, all while leaving patients in need behind.
“Minnesota recently passed exactly the kind of transparency law New York should be emulating, and what the data shows should give Albany serious pause before advancing S.1913/A.6222. Minnesota's 340B covered entities took in $1.34 billion in net program revenue in 2024, yet more than 80% of administrative costs flowed not to patient care, but to outside vendors and intermediaries. Private retail pharmacies that participate in 340B – without being subject to its patient-care obligations – captured nearly 90% of those outside payments. Close to half were located out of state entirely. In New York, the problem is even more alarming: 64% of contract pharmacies designated for low-income patients are in affluent neighborhoods.
“This is what unchecked 340B expansion looks like in practice. The Senate's proposal would grow that system while blocking regulators from tracking how the dollars are used.”
