Comment: Latino, other communities rely on drug pricing program
Published 1:30 am Saturday, January 24, 2026
By Marcos Wanless / For The Herald
My passion in life is lifting up small businesses and the hardworking people who put everything on the line to make them successful.
In 2016, I founded the Seattle Latino Chamber of Commerce with the goal of ensuring the very people who are the backbone of our economy and community have the support and advocacy they need.
One particular need for these individuals and their families is affordable health care. It’s incredibly expensive (and sometimes not even feasible) for small business owners to insure themselves and their dependents. With all of the financial outlay it takes to run a business, there is often very little money left for the entrepreneur to live on and meet their many needs.
It’s crucial, coming off of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, and as we continue to face affordability challenges thanks to bad policymaking in our nation’s capital, that we don’t forget the needs of those who are most responsible for making our economy work for everyone.
Thankfully there’s a program that helps keep drug costs low and essential health care services available and accessible. It’s called the 340B Drug Pricing Program, and the best part of it is it doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime. Unfortunately, the program is constantly under attack from far too many special interest groups.
The way 340B works is it encourages pharmaceutical companies to sell their medications to safety net health care providers — especially in rural areas, but also some in urban centers like Everett and Seattle — at a discount. If the drug companies agree to do this, they can then also sell their products in the profitable Medicare and Medicaid markets.
If they don’t participate, they risk being shut out of those programs, but can continue to charge consumers whatever prices they think individuals will pay. Providers use the savings they generate from the discounts to pay for care desperately needed by patients with low incomes — which includes a lot of early-stage Evergreen State entrepreneurs, especially in the Black and Brown communities.
A quick look at the facts makes it obvious how important the 340B Program is to the Latino community, specifically: Across all community health centers, Hispanic patients comprise the largest share of patients at 40 percent. These health centers rely heavily on 340B savings, along with Medicaid and federal grants, to serve their patient populations.
Sadly, Latinos have the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group in the U.S., at 17 percent as of 2024 estimates, compared to 8.2 percent of the total U.S. population. This lack of insurance often leads them to seek care from safety-net providers that utilize the 340B program.
Starting a business is incredibly difficult work. The people I have met in my work as president of the Seattle Latino Chamber of Commerce never cease to amaze me. Every day is an uphill climb in the best of times, but the covid years were particularly difficult (and expensive) for business owners. Now, they face additional challenges due to the affordability crisis and bad policymaking in our nation’s capital.
Trying to do it all while properly managing a medical condition or living with insufficient insurance coverage is bad enough. Doing it against a backdrop where a change to a program that so many rely on as a barrier between them and an impossible amount of medical debt is too much risk.
My role is to be an advocate and a voice for entrepreneurs while they focus on building and growing their businesses that lift up communities and drive our economy for the benefit of everyone, not just wealthy special interests. Speaking out on behalf of protecting the 340B Program and the good it does for our community is doing just that.
Marcos Wanless is the president and founder of the Seattle Latino Chamber of Commerce and the Latinos US Initiative. He works to expand business opportunities for minorityowned enterprises with government and corporations, while building organizational capacity through advocacy.
