My daughter has Type 1 diabetes. New bill will hurt vulnerable patients like her.

Yahoo

25-03-2025

As a mother of a daughter with Type 1 diabetes, I live with the constant stress of ensuring she has the insulin she needs to survive. Every month, many spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on insulin and other essential supplies, and these costs have only continued to rise ― despite the net costs of insulin declining significantly over the past 15 years.
Meanwhile, hospitals participating in the federal 340B drug pricing program pay just a fraction, yet many fail to pass those savings on to the patients who need them most.
This abuse is why I urge Oklahoma legislators to oppose House Bill 2048, a bill that would expand the 340B program in our state without ensuring the accountability and transparency necessary to protect vulnerable patients, like my daughter. This expansion would allow more large hospitals systems to reap massive discounts on prescription drugs without any requirement to use those savings to lower drug costs for patients or reinvest in services for vulnerable communities. Instead, many large hospital systems pocket the difference, leaving families struggling to afford life-saving medications while the hospitals reap their profits.
The 340B program was originally designed to help safety-net hospitals provide low-cost medications to uninsured and low-income patients. However, charity care accounts for only 2.3% of operating costs at Oklahoma hospitals participating in 340B. To put this in perspective of their profits, from 2014 to 2022, Oklahoma 340B hospitals saw their assets increase by $65,000 per bed, more than 10 times their growth in charity care. HB 2048 would only exacerbate this issue, expanding a broken system that allows hospitals to profit while patients continue to suffer from increasing health care costs.
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For families like mine, the stakes of this reform are painfully real. My daughter's insulin is her lifeline, not a luxury. Insulin is not optional and she's not able to skip doses or ration her supply. It's the difference between life and death. Yet, under the current system, hospitals purchase insulin at drastically reduced prices through 340B and fail to pass those savings down to families in need.
Before expanding 340B, Oklahoma lawmakers should instead focus on reforms that increase transparency and accountability for hospitals participating in the program to ensure the program returns to its mission. We must ensure that hospitals benefiting from these discounts reinvest the savings into direct patient care and lower drug prices. Oklahomans should not be left guessing whether a hospital is using the program as intended or merely boosting its bottom line.
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As lawmakers consider this bill, I urge them to think about the real people affected by high drug prices, including families like mine, who live in constant fear that they won't be able to afford the medication their child needs to survive. Expanding the 340B program without the necessary oversight is not the answer. Legislators should put Oklahomans before hospital profits and reform this broken program.
Kim Koleber is the parent of a child with Type 1 diabetes living in Tulsa, and a member of the Oklahoma Legislative Diabetes Caucus, which supports legislative activities that would improve diabetes research education and treatment.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OK bill will allow hospitals to profit while patients suffer | Opinion