VENN STRATEGIES HIRES THREE FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES TEAM: Venn Strategies has made three new hires in an effort to grow its tax, financial service and retirement policy team. Michael Lanza, who previously served as legislative counsel for House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, has joined as a senior associate; Angela Hoague, who previously worked as executive assistant to former FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, has joined as a special assistant; and Andrew Bariahtaris, who most recently worked at Blank Rome Government Relations, has joined as an associate.

LC, a leading national public affairs and government relations firm, announced it has hired three new team members to support the firm’s continued growth in the areas of tax, financial service and retirement policy.

Massachusetts native Elizabeth Lee first found her passion for the health care industry during her freshman year of high school when she lost one of her teachers to AIDS.

Venn Strategies, LLC, a leading national public affairs and government relations firm, announced today that Elizabeth Lee has joined the firm as a Principal. Lee brings to Venn the benefit of her years of top-level experience in the public health sector, having most recently served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and, before that, as a member of the Legislative Affairs team at the Department of Health and Human Services.

FORMER GILLESPIE POLICY DIRECTOR JOINS VENN: Brian Robertson, who served as policy director for Republican Ed Gillespie’s Senate campaign against Sen. Mark Warner in Virginia, has been hired by Venn Strategies as a vice president. Robertson will be working on economic policy and messaging related to tax and retirement security, according to a statement from the firm. Before Gillespie’s campaign, Robertson served as senior policy adviser for the Joint Economic Committee.

Washington 2024 is putting the finishing touches this week on its proposal to the United States Olympic Committee, which is due Dec. 1.

The View From A Democratic And Republican Strategist. Republicans won control of Congress in last night’s midterm elections. Two political strategists – one from each party – join us to discuss the results.

VENN AND MONUMENT ALSO GROWING BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS: In our spreadsheet on Wednesday, we reported that six firms in our random and arbitrary sample were growing by more than double digits. We missed two in our own tabulation: Monument Policy Group and Venn Strategies also are on pace for a growth rate greater than 10 percent under our calculations.

In his recent opinion piece, Ascension Health CEO Robert Henkel pleads with Congress not to tinker with the 340B Drug Discount Program (“Placing the Health and Well Being of Patients First”, Roll Call, July 16). The program was created in 1992 to benefit medically underserved patients in the outpatient setting, but it has grown into a lucrative opportunity for many disproportionate share hospitals (DSH).

A study released last week by the Berkeley Research Group (BRG) draws a troubling picture of how the 340B drug discount program – created to ensure that medically underserved patients have access to hospital outpatient drugs – not only is benefiting hospitals more than the patients themselves, but in fact may also be driving some hospitals to make business decisions solely in the interest of maximizing financial returns. Both Congress and regulators have an opportunity to put the program back on the right track.

In 1992, the federal government told drugmakers they had to give steep discounts to hospitals that treat a large percentage of poor patients.

The law got bipartisan support and it was a boon for hospitals and the federal government. In the decades that followed, the discount program has grown by leaps and bounds.

More than two decades after Congress formally established the 340B program to ensure that vulnerable and uninsured patients would have access to prescription medicines, it is increasingly clear that needy patients are not always the ones reaping the benefits of this important program.