The senator’s concerns center on a somewhat obscure federal drug discount program known as 340B, which requires pharmaceutical companies to sell their drugs at steep discounts to participating hospitals and other providers that serve a significant percentage of indigent patients.
The providers, including the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which operates more than 50 pharmacies nationwide, are then allowed to turn around and charge public programs like Medicaid and Medicare for the standard amount. The providers then use the difference to enhance staffing and provide services to help low-income patients.
But none of the savings reaped from 340B — or virtually any federal grant or funding program — can be used for lobbying or any kind of political expenses.
Quick question: what does rent control have to do with preventing AIDS?
The organization, whose website says it currently provides services to 1 million individuals in 43 countries, claims to be the largest provider of HIV care in the world. It is headed by Michael Weinstein, who has since become known as the “CEO of HIV" — and whose critics have cited the organization’s aggressive political activism in dubbing him “the Koch Brothers of public health,’’ as a New York Times 2017 profile once noted.
The organization in June dropped $400,000 on an effort to put a rent control measure on the 2020 ballot that would affect residential properties over 15 years old, according to the California Secretary of State’s website. That effort will come before voters two years after AHF spent nearly $24 million on Prop. 10, another unsuccessful rent control effort.
