DENVER — Diagnosed with multiple auto-immune disorders, Bridget Dandaraw-Seritt knows the uncertainty that comes with prescription drug costs.
“It's very terrifying,” she said on Thursday. “You know, we don't know one day from the next if we're going to be able to afford our medication from one month to the next."
Dandaraw-Seritt went on to found Advocates for Compassionate Therapy Now, and now works with hundreds of Colorado families facing those sky-high prices and tough financial choices.
A federal program called 340B started in 1992 to help certain hospitals care for families in that situation. The program allows certain eligible hospitals and clinics serving low-income and uninsured patients — known as “covered entities” — to buy prescription drugs at a discount, so they can pass on those savings and expand their services.
Now, there is bipartisan agreement that the program is still critical, but also broken. At the Colorado State Capitol, there are dueling bipartisan bills on how to fix it.
Senators Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican, and Julie Gonzales, a Democrat, are on opposite ends of the aisle but on the same side supporting Senate Bill 25-124.
They say large hospital systems too often abuse 340B’s lower costs to pad their pockets without helping patients.
“We not only need to know what kind of profits they're making off of these discounted drugs, but the accountability piece,” Kirkmeyer said during a press conference Thursday. “How are we getting that [help] out to underserved communities?”
SB25-124 lays out reporting requirements for hospitals on the money they make from those discounted drugs, and bans them from using it on things like advertising or lobbying.
But hospitals like Denver-based National Jewish Health say not all are seeing massive profits, and the mandated spending would force them to cut services.
“Transparency is a good thing,” said Dr. Steve Frankel, chief clinical officer for National Jewish Health. “There's probably room where everybody can work, particularly if things could be tailored to smaller hospitals, specialty hospitals like ours, but the way it is currently crafted would be nearly impossible for us to meet.”
He and others within the industry say drug-makers are the problem, making it harder for eligible hospitals to get discounted drugs for patients. Frankel used an example of pharmaceutical companies changing rules to only allow patients to pick up discounted drugs at National Jewish’s pharmacy in Denver rather than allow patients in other parts of the state to receive them at partner pharmacies.
Senate Bill 25-071 would ban drug-makers from imposing those restrictions on 340B’s eligible hospitals.
“All [Senate Bill] 71 asks is that the pharmaceutical companies honor the law as plainly written, which they have not been doing, essentially, since the end of the pandemic,” Frankel contended.
The bill also requires hospitals to publicly post the financial benefit they receive from 340B discounts, but critics say that level of transparency doesn’t go far enough.
In the closing weeks of this legislative session, it’s a debate that goes beyond party lines.
“It speaks to how complicated this issue is,” said Frankel. “It speaks to how complicated health care is.”
“Patient issues are not partisan,” Dandaraw-Seritt added. “This affects everybody.”
Denver7 is committed to making a difference in our community by standing up for what's right, listening, lending a helping hand and following through on promises. See that work in action, in the videos above.
