Tampa General (Fla.) Hospital has sued Eli Lilly and Lilly USA, alleging the drugmaker’s decision to cut off the hospital’s 340B pricing access violates Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
According to the July 2 complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Lilly directed wholesaler McKesson to end Tampa General’s 340B discounts June 18, triggering an overnight price jump on Mounjaro from $750.52 per unit at the 340B ceiling price to $1,019.74 at wholesale acquisition cost, a 35.9% increase.
The complaint also cited the Humalog 3-milliliter Kwik Pen, which Tampa General said it paid $2.22 per unit for before the cutoff and is now charged $159.12, and Verzenio, a breast cancer drug, which rose from around $2,426 to more than $4,327 per unit. Tampa General said the price differential now amounts to roughly $2,058,572 per month above the statutory ceiling price, and estimates it will lose about $24.7 million annually as a result.
Based on three months of purchasing data from March through May — during which the hospital spent more than $5 million each on Zepbound and Mounjaro alone, and over $14 million across dozens of Lilly drugs — Tampa General said it paid about $14.2 million for Lilly drugs with 340B discounts and would have paid roughly $20.3 million without them, an increase of about $6.2 million over the three-month span.
The cutoff followed a June 1 “final notice in which Lilly warned Tampa General that if it did not submit the claims-level data Lilly has required since January within five business days, Lilly would treat the hospital as having rejected its 340B pricing offer and would instruct wholesalers to cut off access until the data was provided. Tampa General did not comply on that timetable, making it one of the hospitals swept into a broader enforcement push under which Lilly has begun denying 340B discounts to noncompliant hospitals nationwide.
The hospital said it sent Lilly letters May 8, June 4 and June 17 seeking clarification on data use, privacy safeguards and a compliance extension, stating each time that it was not rejecting Lilly’s 340B pricing offer, and that Lilly did not respond to the final two letters. Tampa General dispenses Lilly products exclusively through its in-house pharmacy and does not use contract pharmacies, but the complaint said Lilly applied the same data demand and penalty, regardless.
The complaint cites three counts under Florida’s trade practices law, arguing the conduct amounts to an unfair method of competition, an unfair trade practice and a per se violation, the latter citing state laws in Colorado, Maine, Nebraska, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and New Mexico that bar conditioning 340B discounts on claims-data submission. Tampa General is seeking a declaration that Lilly’s conduct violates the law, an order to halt it, actual damages in excess of $24.7 million, and attorneys’ fees.
A Lilly spokesperson told Becker’s the lawsuit is part of a broader hospital effort to resist transparency measures the company says are needed to address fraud and abuse in the 340B program, and that the claims data Lilly requires is information hospitals already routinely share with insurers. The spokesperson said Lilly will continue pushing for changes intended to ensure the program benefits vulnerable patients rather than hospitals and their partners.
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