Prescription medicines bought within the U.S. underneath a controversial authorities discount program amounted to $63 billion in 2023, a 23.4% improve from the earlier year, in accordance to the Health Resources & Services Administration, which oversees the program.
The knowledge mark a regular rise in gross sales underneath the 340B Drug Discount Program, which requires drugmakers to supply reductions which might be sometimes estimated to be 25% to 50% — however may very well be larger — off all outpatient medication to hospitals and clinics that primarily serve lower-income sufferers. There are greater than 12,000 entities taking part within the program, a quantity that has grown considerably.
Since it started greater than 30 years in the past, the program has ballooned and fed into the nationwide conflict over the price of medicines. Some $38 billion in prescription drugs had been bought underneath the 340B program in 2020, for example, which was up from $16.2 billion in 2016. And this fast-paced trajectory has triggered a battle between the pharmaceutical and hospital industries.
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