Free market think tank Heartland Impact will soon launch a new ad campaign urging Kansas lawmakers to end the waste, fraud and abuse prevalent in the 340B hospital system program, alleging that these hospitals take millions from taxpayers while the community receives few benefits in return.
Executive Director of Heartland Impact Cameron Sholty told The Center Square that the goal of his organization’s campaign “is to urge Kansas lawmakers to rein in the waste, fraud, and abuse in the 340B hospital program rather than blindly expanding it.”
“Lawmakers have an opportunity to install safeguards and bring accountability to a system that is meant to serve low-income Kansans but instead is being used by corporate hospitals for programs that don’t directly benefit or help patients,” Sholty said.
Sholty explained that the 340B program “was meant to assist safety-net hospital providers and low-income patients, but over time a lack of accountability has allowed that program to become a slush fund for big hospitals.”
“As a result, American families and taxpayers are subsidizing the wish lists of corporate hospitals while patient care suffers,” Sholty said.
“Every dollar that is lost to waste, fraud or abuse is a dollar not spent on providing healthcare in the Jayhawk State in our communities or on research and innovation,” Sholty said.
The 340B program was created in 1992, and according to Heartland Impact’s digital ads, was “framed as a way to help rural hospitals or reduce drugs costs for patients.
The ads say that “in Kansas, tax exempt hospital systems like the University of Kansas take millions from taxpayers but get terrible rankings for their community benefits.”
Heartland Impact bases its claim off the University of Kansas Health System’s Fiscal Year 2025 Overview, as well as poor community benefit ratings in the Lown Institute Hospitals Index.
Taking in vast amounts of money while giving back less takes place “all while spending millions on World Cup operations and naming rights on a women’s soccer training facility,” the ads say.
The ads also detail how non-profit Kansas healthcare system Stormont Vail uses the taxpayer dollars it received through the 340B program to help lower-income patients to “garnish wages.”
The ads further state that Kansas healthcare network Ascension Via Christi “has taken millions in federal funds, paid their last CEO nearly 2 million dollars, and [cut] corners on key services.”
Heartland Impact urges viewers of its ads to tell their representatives that “it’s time to put patients first and cut the waste, fraud and abuse in the 340B program.”
Heartland Impact is running its ads ahead of the Kansas legislature’s Oct. 19-20 Special Committee on the 340B Program.
The Center Square reached out to the University of Kansas Health System, Stormont Vail, and Ascension Via Christi each individually for comment. None responded at the time of publishing.