“The 340B program may produce the results intended at some hospitals,” said Sayeh Nikpay, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University and a co-author on the study. “But as the program grew, it benefited many hospitals with less need for assistance in serving low-income populations.”

Image A protest in San Diego in February to protect the 340B program. Credit... Denis Poroy/Associated Press

Other research corroborates that hospitals aren’t using the 340B program as intended. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine was unable to find any evidence that profits from 340B have led to more access to care for low-income patients, or reductions in mortality rates among them. Another study in Health Affairs found that 340B hospitals have increasingly expanded into more affluent communities with higher rates of insurance.

The 340B program may have also inadvertently raised costs — for example, by encouraging care in 340B-eligible hospitals that could have been provided less expensively elsewhere. A study in Health Services Research found that hospital participation in 340B is associated with a shift of cancer care from lower-cost physician offices to higher-cost hospital settings.

The program may also encourage providers to use more expensive drugs. The more hospitals can charge insurers and public programs for a drug — relative to how much they have to pay for it under the program — the greater the revenue they receive. They also receive more revenue when the drugs are prescribed more often.

In January, Medicare lowered the prices it pays for 340B drugs by 27 percent. Although this move chips away at how much hospitals can benefit financially, it does little to address how much insurers and individuals pay for prescription drugs or the value they obtain from them. In addition, the move does nothing to increase hospital spending that could help the poor.

It may even harm some health care organizations, leading to lower-quality care at those institutions that are helping the poor. Studies have shown that, by and large, when hospitals lose financial resources, they make cuts that could harm some patients.

This can happen if cuts lead to reductions in workers who perform important clinical functions. A study in Health Services Research found that hospitals cut nursing staff in response to Medicare payment cuts in the late 1990s. Heart attack mortality rates improved less at hospitals that had larger cuts.