HC Reform Update from Mark Sanna: In an unintended consequence of the new health care law, drug companies have begun notifying children’s hospitals around the country that they no longer qualify for large discounts on drugs used to treat rare medical conditions. As a result, prices are going up for these specialized “orphan drugs,” some of which are also used to treat more common conditions. The FDA classifies more than 350 medicines as orphan drug products. Manufacturers said they could not recover the costs of developing such drugs if they were required to sell them at deeply discounted prices. A House Democrat who worked on the health care law said the situation had resulted from “an honest mistake in drafting,” and he added, “No one intended to take away any of the drug discounts that children’s hospitals already had.” The discount program is widely known as the 340B program, after the relevant section of the Public Health Service Act.