The American Hospital Association and its fellow plaintiffs asked a federal court Oct. 21 to reject motions by AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim and PhRMA to intervene in the lawsuit seeking to block HRSA’s 340B rebate pilot, according to a filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine. The plaintiffs said they do not object to the drugmakers participating as amici, or friends of the court.
The AHA, the Maine Hospital Association and the hospital plaintiffs argued that the court rejected nearly identical motions in December 2025, when it denied drug companies’ and PhRMA’s bids to join the first challenge to the pilot, finding their claims that the government would inadequately represent them were “founded entirely on speculation.” They called the case a straightforward Administrative Procedure Act dispute over an existing administrative record, which the government can present and defend. The movants “offer nothing meaningful to add,” the filing said.
The plaintiffs said the drugmakers share the government’s goal of getting the pilot in place by Jan. 1, 2027, and that the government made the arguments the companies claim it will drop in last year’s case. They also challenged the drugmakers’ claims of financial harm from duplicate discounts, saying the movants have not pointed to a single specific duplicate discount. Drug companies in Medicare’s price negotiation program have run both programs without a rebate mechanism since Jan. 1, 2026, the filing said, and two companies chose not to include their drugs in the pilot. HRSA itself acknowledged there is no federal estimate of duplicate discounts in 340B, they said.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the earlier denial Sept. 25 as moot, but the hospitals said that reflects only the drugmakers’ decision to keep litigating intervention for seven months after the first case ended Feb. 10, not the merits.
The hospitals sued Oct. 9 to block the revised pilot, which HRSA approved 10 drugmakers to join. A bipartisan House bill would delay it for two years.
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