I despise all of them.
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They are trying. Our patient advocates are on it. They discuss this mess daily. The diabetics are in the conversation. Try to hang in there. https://www.pbmaccountability.org/post/real-voices-real-rx-reform The third video is 'betics weighing in.
I don’t want prison for the people, I want comparable punishment for the corporations. In this case the guilty corporation is the health care services company, well, maybe technically a contractor, but all the same. I’m much more concerned with companies that were even convicted but were not wound down.
Going after people, individuals, when we have a legal opinion that gives equivalent privileges to faceless corporations and they are golden? Maybe that is the true herald of free enterprise.
What I don’t see any of these cases is holding other’s accountable. Where are the sanctions on medical personnel and pulling of licenses for signing bogus orders? Hitting the CEO is great, but we need the follow on work against fraudulent doctors signing scripts without having done the work of looking and evaluating a person/patient! It may be there, but the AGs and DOJ and state attorney’s don’t seem to be pushing these enablers. It may the expense and time of cases, but if that isn’t equally emphasized, we’re not effecting change of the system.
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I’m gonna dump one from my local pharmacists today because I just LOVE it when they have the back of cancer patients. If there’s one group of patient who have a worse time than diabetics, it’s cancer patients. I tell them to keep up the work!
The pharmacists are on cancer care and the hospital in St Coud today…I’m sending it so you can see the narrative…
"A cancer patient was sued for $8,000 she can’t afford.
Her hospital made $52 million from a program meant to help her.
KFF Health News recently republished a story from The Minnesota Star Tribune about Cori Roberts, a divorced mom that earned $41,000 a year and owed $8,000 in cancer treatment bills she couldn’t afford.
CentraCare denied her charity care application, sued her, and she had to take a loan against her retirement to pay.
For context, here’s a breakdown of Minnesota’s charity care
↳ Hospitals spend ~0.8% of operating budgets on charity care vs 2.4% national average
↳ Among the lowest charity care rate in the U.S.
↳ 62 of 123 hospitals devoted less than 0.5% to charity care (2020-2024)
↳ CentraCare’s St. Cloud Hospital: less than 0.25%
This sounds like a potential use case for 340B profits for a vulnerable patient!
340B is a drug program that allows hospitals to buy drugs at steep discounts while still charging insurance for the full price.
Here are the 340B profits made by those same hospitals offering minimal charity care
↳ Minnesota hospitals absorbed $1.34 billion in net profits in 2024
↳ CentraCare made over $52 million of that 340B profit
However, there’s no requirement for the hospitals to use 340B profits on charity care, even if they have a patient that can’t afford an $8,000 bill.
Zero transparency is required in return for 340B profits
↳ There are no reporting requirement for how $1.3B in 340B profits are spent
↳ Charity care? Executive compensation? New facilities?
Nonprofit hospitals receive tax exemptions in exchange for community benefit obligations.
The 340B program is additional profit on top of the tax exemptions, which we covered in detail on this blog
Minnesota hospitals collect multiple public subsidies while providing minimal charity care and suing patients who can’t pay their bills.
Patients and payers funding this system deserve to know where the $1.34 billion in 340B profits are going.
It’s obviously not to vulnerable patients.
Sources:
KFF Health News link
The Minnesota Star Tribune
https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-nonprofit-hospital-charity-care-medical-debt/601488936
Minnesota 340B blog
Repost to ask what 340B money is being used for
Follow me for more on uncompensated care and 340B (Bryce Platt, PharmD)"
That sounds really frustrating. Reliable access matters so much, even when something is not perfect. Just knowing what you can count on can make a huge difference.
Things are actually going pretty great on NPH. Surprising. One of the patient advocates who focuses on insulin supply said they might stop manufacturing it one day. That freaked me out. I don’t know if that’s true. It’s the only truley accessible form of insulin on the market.
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