AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Novartis have filed separate lawsuits in Illinois, each seeking to overturn a recently enacted state law that allows hospitals and clinics serving under-insured and low-income patients – so-called 'covered entities' – to use contract pharmacies for dispensing medicines provided under the 340B programme. The lawsuits on the use of contracted pharmacies are an extension of that effort, responding to state-level legislation designed to protect the current contract pharmacy arrangements by requiring drug manufacturers to honour discounted pricing at those locations. Various lawsuits have challenged laws implemented not only in Illinois, but also in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Tennessee. It claims that, when the original 340B policy was changed from allowing just one contract pharmacy to an unlimited number, the volume of 340B claims skyrocketed, forcing drugmakers to introduce "reasonable limits" on the use of contract pharmacies as conditions of offering 340B pricing. Abuse of the 340B system is a longstanding complaint of the pharma industry, which has previously contended that recipients of the discounted medicines charge both uninsured patients and insurance companies higher prices, pocketing the difference.