Committee advances HB 136 requiring 340B reporting after divided testimony from hospitals, payers and patient‑advocates

The House Health and Welfare Committee voted to send House Bill 136 to the House floor with a due‑pass recommendation after a day of divided testimony from hospital leaders, insurers, pharmacy owners and policy analysts. Representative Jordan Redmond (R‑District 3) introduced the bill, which would require covered entities participating in the federal 340B drug‑pricing program to report acquisition costs, payments received and the use of 340B savings; aggregate reports would be published on the State Controller’s Transparent Idaho site.

Representative Redmond said the statute’s purpose is transparency and accountability for a federal program that originally aimed to help safety‑net providers: “Without transparency into federally created programs, we wouldn’t have these findings come to light,” he said, citing national reports that documented large markups in some instances.

The committee heard sharply contrasting testimony. Kelly Griffith, executive director of pharmacy for Kootenai Health, told the committee Kootenai supports transparency but opposed broadly public disclosure of negotiated prices because it could be “used against us” by payers and competitors. “Asking us to share negotiated prices, with essentially competitors that can benefit from it, really compromises hospitals,” Griffith said, noting hospitals already report to HRSA and undergo federal audits.

Toni Lawson of the Idaho Hospital Association urged caution on the technical construction of the bill and argued some required disclosures could duplicate federal reporting or be technically infeasible. Jason Ronk of Blue Cross of Idaho and representatives of other health plans said added transparency would help explain why prescription costs — and, in turn, insurance premiums — are rising, and that insurer data combined with provider acquisition data would improve oversight.

Third‑party witnesses and policy groups pressed both sides. Corey Kerger, a pharmacy owner, and Chris Cargill of the Mountain States Policy Center urged reporting to detect misuse, saying national studies show instances where 340B discounts were not demonstrably passed to patients or communities. Providers pushed back, citing HRSA audits and the potential for payers to use the data to reduce reimbursements.

Representative Redmond and supporters framed the bill as a narrowly tailored transparency requirement that would not itself appropriate funds. The bill requires covered entities to submit data to the State Controller, which would prepare an aggregated report for public posting; the statute in its draft also designates submitted data as confidential at the itemized level and requires aggregated disclosure only.

Committee members asked technical questions about whether the state controller’s office could accept and post the aggregated data and whether the bill would create duplicate reporting burdens for hospitals already subject to federal reporting and HRSA audits. Representative Redmond said he had consulted the State Controller’s Office and was told it could accept and aggregate the data.

After hours of testimony the committee voted to send House Bill 136 to the floor with a due‑pass recommendation. Representative David Fuhrman made the committee motion. The motion passed on a recorded voice vote and the bill will move to the next stage in the House process.