THE 340B SCAM
— Buzz Patterson (@BuzzPatterson) June 12, 2026
A federal program created in 1992 to help low-income patients afford their medicine has quietly ballooned into one of the largest – and least accountable – corners of American healthcare.
It’s called “340B,” and almost no one knows how it works. That’s precisely…
A federal program created in 1992 to help low-income patients afford their medicine has quietly ballooned into one of the largest – and least accountable – corners of American healthcare.
It’s called “340B,” and almost no one knows how it works. That’s precisely the point.
In a nutshell: it’s a huge scam! An $80 billion scam.
This is how it works. Hospital systems buy drugs at deep discounts, turn and charge insurers the full price, and they pocket the difference.
In Minnesota, for example, hospitals kept 98% of net 340B profits in 2024. Patients saw almost none of it.
To add insult to injury, the cost gets passed back to the families through higher premiums and higher drug costs.
Worst of all? Hospitals are not required to prove that a single dollar of those discounts ever even reaches a patient!
That’s unacceptable, folks.
President Trump is pushing to bring transparency to 340B.Of course, the hospital lobby is fighting him.
Congress has a chance to finish the job by passing basic transparency rules – that already exist in every other major federal healthcare program.
Politics aside, the ask is simple: Prove the money is reaching patients. Where is the $80 billion going?
Who qualifies? Where do the dollars go?
Hospitals should be able to answer that. And we should demand those answers!
This is the moment to get it done.
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