Kerrigan in Washington Examiner: 340B – A Hidden Driver of Small Businesses’ Soaring Health Costs

By SBE Council at 13 May, 2026, 11:47 am

In a Washington Examiner Op-Ed, SBE Council president & CEO Karen Kerrigan writes that lawmakers need to understand the various reasons for rising health insurance costs and begin to address them or small businesses will continue to drop health coverage:

"One of these reasons is the hospitals' exploitation of a little-known federal charity program. Without reforms, that program will only continue to drive up costs for small businesses and the self-employed."

Kerrigan explains the 340B program, which started relatively small that now has over 2400 hospitals enrolled. She notes that if Congress stipulated that the savings of the program go to patients (not hospitals) from the beginning, perhaps the negative outcomes and distortions of the program could have been avoided. She observes:

"When patients with employer-sponsored insurance receive a drug that a hospital purchased through 340B, the employer-sponsored health plan doesn't receive the manufacturer rebates it normally would. As a result, employers of all sizes end up paying higher net drug prices, which inevitably leads to higher premiums."

Kerrigan urges Congress to act. Read the full Op-Ed here.