The Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing today to review various proposals to alter the 340B prescription drug discount program.

That program enables hospitals that care for especially large numbers of low-income patients to receive discounts on prescription drugs that they dispense on an outpatient basis to low-income patients.

Among the issues the Health Subcommittee is expected to consider are whether hospitals are using these discounts to benefit their low-income patients and whether the extent of the discounts the pharmaceutical industry is required to provide result in increased prescription drug costs for others.

The subcommittee has already held two hearings on the 340B program this year and is currently considering more than a dozen proposals to change the program in some way.

Private safety-net hospitals typically participate in the 340B program and consider it an essential tool in their efforts to serve the residents of the low-income communities in which they are located.

Learn more about the 340B program and the various proposals to change it currently before Congress in this Roll Call article.