ADAP Advocacy

ADAP Advocacy Publishes Infographic Series on the 340B Program Infographics analyze hospital revenues and executive compensation, compared to hospital charity care and patient medical debt WASHINGTON, DC, November 25, 2024?/24-7PressRelease/?-- ADAP Advocacy today, as part of its 340B Project, published an infographic series on the 340B Drug Pricing Program. The infographics highlight how under the program, hospital charity care is declining while medical debt is exploding despite hospital revenue growth and hospital CEO pay raises. The ADAP Advocacy-sponsored Ryan White Grantee 340B Patient Advisory Committee has increasingly focused on medical debt and its impact on patients living with chronic illnesses and rare diseases. Read more: https://lnkd.in/g-ecrd6Q

Courts Put Guardrails on 340B Program, Aiding Reform Efforts to Ebb Abuse Since 1992, the 340B Drug Pricing Program has enabled eligible health care providers, referred to as covered entities, “to stretch scarce federal resources to reach more eligible patients or provide more comprehensive services.”?One of the most notable characteristics of the program is that it is not funded by the government. Since it requires drug manufacturers to sell medications to eligible entities at steep discounts, in essence, it is a legally mandated reallocation of financial resources from private industry to providers. As such, abuses of the program are especially egregious. The vast growth of the 340B Program over time has led to increased abuses in it as big hospital systems and mega service providers sought to enhance their profits over serving vulnerable patient populations. A tug-of-war among varied interests has generated many legal challenges in attempts at 340B reform. Recently, the pharmaceutical industry has achieved wins in its favor. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ede62a7d

HIV Advocates Worry About the Unintended Consequences of the Inflation Reduction Act Advocates across the HIV patient, provider, and pharmaceutical sectors are sounding the alarm about the potential for provisions within the?Inflation Reduction Act of 2022?to have unintended consequences for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Specifically, advocates, including ADAP Advocacy, are concerned that Sections 11001 and 11002—the sections that establish the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program that will give the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) the ability to negotiate maximum fair prices (MFPs) for certain high expenditure, single source drugs and biologic products—will stifle innovation, limit the selection of antiretroviral (ARV) medications for PLWHA, and create new barriers for PLWHA attempting to access medications to treat other conditions as PLWHA continue to age while living with the disease. Read more: https://lnkd.in/e9dUrgEt

Putting Politics Ahead of Public Health is Spelling Trouble for Tennessee In 2023, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, rejected nine million dollars in federal HIV funding from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). This meant that the pass-through grant contracts associated with the Integrated HIV Programs for Health Departments to Support Ending the Epidemic in the United States CDC-RFA-PS20-2010 grant and the Tennessee Integrated HIV Surveillance and Prevention Programs for Health Departments CDC-RFA-PS18-1802 grant ended in May of 2023.[1]?The decision meant a significant cut in funding for HIV prevention, education, and treatment for public health centers and many community-based organizations. The adverse effects of the decision are materializing, and experts continue to sound the alarm about how devastating the outcomes will impact the state. Read more: https://lnkd.in/epNw_f5x

Kidney Transplants Between Donors and Recipients with HIV is Safe; Study Every eight minutes, a person is added to the U.S. organ transplant waiting list.?Although names are added and removed daily, as of October 21st, there are 104,360 candidates on the list.?Daily, around seventeen people die waiting for an organ.?The organ transplantation landscape for people who are HIV-positive is more dire because they face a higher likelihood of dying while on the waitlist in addition to lesser access to transplants than those living without HIV.?This is why the resulting conclusion of a?study?published last week in?The New England Journal of Medicine?is promising news. The study data proved that kidney transplantation between donors and recipients with HIV is safe. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eR2-JpjB

Biden Sides with Insurers, Shifting More Costs to Patients The high cost of healthcare is the product of a complex, fragmented financing system. The machinations of multiple public and private payors coupled with the advent of middlemen, such as pharmacy benefit managers, in the healthcare expenditure landscape often hinder the development of common sense solutions. This is especially true in the present discourse surrounding?340B Drug Pricing Program,?Prescription Drug Affordability Boards?(PDABs), and?Alternative Funding Programs, which are all intertwined around 'controlling' prescription drug costs. At the center of the medical, fiscal maelstrom is the patient. Rising?medical debt?has a crushing impact on many aspects of patients’ lives and healthcare outcomes. Potential solutions come and go. Unfortunately, one remedy to alleviate patient costs recently failed. The Biden Administration fell short of instituting promised regulations surrounding patient protections against insurers abusing copay assistance programs. Read more: https://lnkd.in/epPsqDFU

Are Nonprofit Hospitals' Community Benefit Tax Breaks Truly Serving Communities in Need? Nonprofit hospitals are supposed to be primarily focused on the communities they serve. They exist, in theory, to provide quality, equitable access to care for all, regardless of the ability to pay. The mission should be community service and improving the healthcare outcomes and well-being of their communities. Unlike for-profit hospitals, which concentrate on generating profits for private shareholders or owners, nonprofit hospitals are mandated to use their profits to invest in the community. Unfortunately, data shows that many nonprofit hospitals are not fiscally operating to properly benefit their communities despite the significant tax exemptions they are afforded, referred to as community benefits. In fact, some nonprofit hospital systems are exploiting their tax incentives and adding to patient and community medical debt. As such, many stakeholders and policymakers are increasingly scrutinizing nonprofit hospitals' tax-exempt status. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eY8yypcT

In the United State, is Medical Debt is Truly Hospital Debt? Medical debt continues to be a crippling financial burden to many Americans, with most of the debt being owed to hospitals in the United States. Approximately 100 million adults have medical debt ranging from $500 to over $5,000.[1]?Despite changes credit reporting agencies made in 2022, 15 million Americans still have more than $49 billion in unpaid medical collections on their credit reports.[2]?Medical debt is a financial hindrance to many aspects of people’s lives and can even result in poor healthcare outcomes and denial of care. The evolution of medical debt relief efforts continues to move forward on the federal and state levels in hopes of unsaddling Americans of debt that they had no choice in incurring. Read more: https://lnkd.in/efB6vy5D

Injectable PrEP a Game Changer for HIV Prevention, But is it Accessible? Benjamin Franklin is credited with the phrase ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ In other words, it is better to prevent something than to deal with the consequences or attempt to fix the damage after the fact. This sentiment can be applied to many aspects of the human condition, including public health, in general, and specifically HIV/AIDS. That is why developments in Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) are so valuable. Recently, researchers reported a new milestone in clinical trials involving the long-acting injectable antiretroviral lenacapavir as an option for PrEP. It could be a game-changer for HIV prevention, if potential patients can access it. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ePABP-XC

HRSA Issues Numerous Guidance Letters Offering Patient Assistance The clients who qualify for and receive assistance through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) are often representative of vulnerable populations. Providing a comprehensive means of providing HIV medications, healthcare, and related-services requires a whole-person approach. As such, Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) continues to evaluate and update its RWHAP endeavors to meet client needs. Systematic barriers exist that all to often challenge RWHAP clients’ ability to receive appropriate and consistent care. Recently, HRSA issued numerous guidance letters addressing those barriers. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ej-qCX43 Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSAgov), HHS