States force drugmakers to keep selling cheaper meds under federal program

• September 5, 2024

Shalina Chatlani | Stateline.org (TNS)

In their ongoing quest to lower prescription drug prices, some states are forcing drugmakers to continue to sell cheaper medications to thousands of pharmacies through a federal drug-discount program.

Under the 32-year-old 340B program, pharmaceutical companies that participate in Medicaid must sell outpatient drugs at discounted prices to clinics, community health centers and hospitals that primarily serve low-income patients. The idea is that providers will use the money they save — between 20% and 50% off the normal price — to expand their services.

But many such facilities don’t have in-house pharmacies, so in 2010 the federal government expanded the 340B program to allow many more outside pharmacies — so-called contract pharmacies — to dispense the drugs to eligible patients on behalf of health centers and hospitals. Among the top four pharmacy chains (Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens), 71% of locations participate in the 340B program, according to a recent study by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Drugmakers contend that the 340B program has grown far beyond its original intent, and that some hospitals are pocketing the savings instead of investing the money in more services. Some research supports that contention.

In 2020, seven major pharmaceutical manufacturers announced that they would restrict or halt 340B drug sales to contract pharmacies, since those sales aren’t required under federal law. As of last September, 25 drugmakers had imposed such restrictions, according to 340B Health, an advocacy group that represents more than 1,500 public and private nonprofit hospitals and health systems.

“We as an industry continue to provide those discounts, but we’re concerned that there’s no evidence patients are seeing any improved access or that they’re seeing lower costs,” said Nicole Longo, deputy vice president for public affairs at Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group representing drugmakers.

States are pushing back. This year, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri and West Virginia have enacted laws requiring drugmakers that participate in Medicaid to sell discounted drugs to contract pharmacies. In 2021, Arkansas became the first state with such a law, and Louisiana followed in 2023. Other states, including New York, have considered similar bills this year.

“It’s very hard to maintain services and keep a hospital open. So, when 340B came into play, it was very helpful,” West Virginia Republican state Sen. Tom Takubo, the sponsor of the legislation in his state, told Stateline.

“They just unilaterally stopped delivering medications to those peripheral pharmacies,” Takubo said. “And so, we passed a bill that said you can’t do that. You gotta deliver out there. And if you don’t do it, we’re gonna fine you.”

340B expansion

One thing is certain: The 2010 expansion of the 340B program to many more contract pharmacies has dramatically expanded access to the discounted drugs. The number of retail pharmacies participating in the program grew from 789 in 2009 to 25,775 in 2022, according to a study published last year in JAMA Health Forum.

Patient spending on 340B discounted drugs also has increased significantly, from $6.6 billion in 2010 to $43.9 billion in 2021, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Karen Mulligan, a research assistant professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, said there are valid arguments on both sides of the debate. The point of the 340B program is not to subsidize drugs for low-income patients, she said. Rather, it is to funnel financial support to struggling community health centers and rural hospitals.

The federal government began allowing those entities to use contract pharmacies because many of them did not have pharmacies in-house, Mulligan said. But she pointed out that the expansion of the 340B program also has brought in some hospitals that “make plenty of money without 340B.” And because the 340B reporting requirements for hospitals are lax, she said, it’s not clear that they are using the money they save to improve patient care.

The challenge, Mulligan said, is that efforts to rein in the program likely would harm all providers — those that need the savings to serve low-income patients and those that don’t.

“The program’s intention is not what the program looks like today, and that’s why you have so many different people on different sides,” Mulligan told Stateline.

A broad range of patients

Some critics of the 340B program claim the discounts end up flowing to hospitals located in wealthier neighborhoods.

But Joey Mattingly, an associate professor of pharmacy at the University of Utah who has been in pharmacy for more than two decades, said the health care providers that use contract pharmacies see a broad range of patients. And the revenue they get helps those hospitals stay open.

“When you lose the hospital and it’s no longer even available in your community, now you’ve got to drive farther to get to a hospital,” Mattingly told Stateline. “That’s not to say that if 340B went away tomorrow, you would lose a bunch of hospitals. But I think you’d see a lot of changes that would be dramatic.”

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Mattingly said a lot of hospitals and clinics use the savings to create changes that are both economical and helpful to patients. For example, they may start offering free or subsidized drugs in-house that patients could get right away, increasing the likelihood that they will actually take the medicine and avoid a costly hospital readmission.

Aimee Kuhlman, vice president of advocacy at the American Hospital Association, said the 340B program generates tens of billions of dollars in savings that hospitals use to benefit patients.

“The reality is, Big Pharma doesn’t want to give discounts to hospitals or the patients these hospitals serve, they want to keep it for themselves,” Kuhlman told Stateline. “The fact is, 340B is a critical resource to eligible hospitals and the patients and communities they serve.”

Participation in Medicaid is optional, and pharmaceutical companies that don’t want to provide the 340B discounts can decline to be part of it, said Greg Havard, CEO of the 49-bed George Regional Health System in Lucedale, Mississippi, a city of a few thousand people close to the Gulf Coast.

“Pharmacy manufacturers have agreed to sell certain drugs to us at a lower price, and the 340B program is there to help us recoup costs on services or facilities that we operate to treat these folks and try to keep the doors open,” Havard told Stateline. “The reason we as a group wanted to pursue legislation is because pharmaceutical manufacturers, during the height of the worst pandemic in 100 years … stopped honoring our contract pharmacies that have been a practice in place for 15 years.”

Vacheria Keys, associate vice president of policy and regulatory affairs at the National Association of Community Health Centers, also argued that the facilities she represents invest 340B savings into patient care. Keys said the program is essential because the federal funding that community health centers receive “doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.”

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies are challenging the new state laws in court. Last month, for example, a federal judge denied a bid by drugmaker Novartis to halt Mississippi’s law. The company told Stateline it plans to appeal the decision.

Robert Dozier, executive director of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacies Association, hailed the new state law and the court’s ruling.

“We’re getting more brand-name drug manufacturers back on board,” Dozier told Stateline. “That gives us access to more medication to where we can help more people in the community.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

The technology used to make the COVID vaccine may be key to pancreatic cancer treatment

• September 5, 2024

Kendall Staton | (TNS) Lexington Herald-Leader

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Researchers at the University of Kentucky are testing the effectiveness of a vaccine that may be able to treat pancreatic cancer.

As one of 15 research institutions across the nation taking part in the new clinical trial, UK HealthCare will test a vaccine, made with the same sequencing technology as the COVID vaccine, to try to lessen the recurrence of pancreatic cancer.

“Patients with pancreatic cancer need additional treatment options. Pancreatic cancer is one of the cancers that we have made little, if any, progress over the last couple of decades, and so this is a potential major breakthrough,” said Dr. Joseph Kim, chief of surgical oncology at UK’s Markey Cancer Center.

To be eligible for the trial, patients have to have a cancerous tumor that is resectable, meaning it can be removed through surgery. That limits the number of potential participants, Kim said, because most forms of pancreatic cancer can’t be removed.

UK will enroll a few patients per month during the trial, with the plan for a total of 200 participants across all research institutions.

Once removed, the tumor is sent to a company in Europe, Genentech, which will perform DNA sequencing on the tumor to create an individualized vaccine for each patient. If effective, the vaccine will lessen the recurrence of pancreatic cancer.

“Even after removal, uniformly, a large percentage of patients will have a recurrence of disease,” Kim said. “There are additional sites of disease that are just not visible with the naked eye, not visible with all the fancy radiographic imaging studies that we have. And so the vaccine would target what we would call the occult, or hidden, cancer cells.”

This particular model was tested in a previous clinical trial to determine if it was safe to administer, called a phase one trial. With successful results, it now moves onto a phase two trial, where its effectiveness will be studied.

Unlike other forms of cancer, patients with pancreatic cancer do not have a lot of effective treatment options, making clinical trials almost standard treatment. Kentucky has the second-highest rate of pancreatic cancer among U.S. states, according to information from the CDC.

“Our pancreatic cancer group here just published a paper showing that the outcomes for patients from Appalachian areas are worse than they are from other areas of Kentucky,” Kim said.

“Patients from our underdeveloped, social, economically challenged areas of the state are not getting optimal care. We showed in our recent study, when patients did receive standard therapies – the best of care – that in the Appalachian patients with pancreatic cancer, such disparities are equalized, or those disparities are eliminated.”

Kim said other trials have so far found vaccines used to treat skin cancer to be safe and effective. He said he thinks vaccines created through DNA sequencing will become mainstream cancer treatment.

——–

©2024 Lexington Herald-Leader. Visit at kentucky.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Check out our OC photographers’ favorite images from August 2024

• September 5, 2024

We asked our photographers to pick their favorite moments from July 2024, and here are some of the images they selected.

Check out the photos and follow The Orange County Register on Facebook and Instagram. Here are our staff photographers’ individual pages: Paul Bersebach, Jeff Gritchen, Jeff Gritchen Aerial, Images, Leonard Ortiz, Mark Rightmire, and Mindy Schauer.

Stay safe and stay healthy!

 

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Related linksCheck out our favorite images from July 2024Check out our favorite images from June 2024Check out our favorite images from May 2024Check out our favorite images from March 2024Check out our favorite images from February 2024Check out our favorite images from January 2024Check out our OC photographers’ favorite images from 2023

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Ducks sign goaltender Oscar Dansk to one-year, two-way contract

• September 5, 2024

The Ducks bolstered their goalie depth by signing Oscar Dansk to a one-year, two-way contract.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed but it’s maximum value is likely near the NHL minimum salary.

Dansk, 30, has just six games of NHL experience, all coming with the Vegas Golden Knights. He won four of his decisions with a .906 save percentage, two points above his .904 mark in the American Hockey League, where he has made 171 appearances.

He was originally selected 31st overall by the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2012.

After he was not tendered a second contract offer by Columbus, he signed with Vegas. He helped the Golden Knights’ minor-league affiliate reach the Calder Cup finals in 2019.

The Swede later spent a year in Russia with Spartak Moscow before returning to North America for two seasons with the Calgary Flames’ top affiliate, where he spent the past two seasons.

Last year, he backed up Dustin Wolf and also won his club’s IOA/American Specialty Man of the Year Award for the third time, which honored Dansk’s community service. The Stockholm native has worked with Ronald McDonald House and other charities.

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Internationally, Dansk won a silver medal for Sweden at both the U18 and U20 levels.

Dansk will likely compete with Calle Clang for starts in the AHL, with Vyacheslav Buteyets also entering the Ducks’ stateside netminding mix. Tomas Suchanek, who emerged last season after signing as an undrafted free agent, sustained a lower-body injury and may miss significant time as a result.

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The best ways to give money to a teenager

• September 5, 2024

By Kimberly Palmer | NerdWallet

The investing information provided on this page is for educational purposes only. NerdWallet, Inc. does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend or advise investors to buy or sell particular stocks, securities or other investments.

Giving money to teenage children might sound simple, but it can quickly become complicated. Parents often want to set limits on how much their teens can spend, teach them about money management and protect them from fraud, all at the same time.

“It’s about knowing your kids and tailoring the approach a little bit to the child,” says Amy Spalding, a certified financial planner at District Capital Management, a Washington, D.C.-based firm. Some kids need more active help to stay organized and learn how to stay within a budget, while others need to be encouraged to practice spending in the real world.

Here are some strategies to consider when providing money to your teenager:

Start with cash

When children are using money on their own for the first time, sticking with cash can be the easiest way for them to learn how to manage it, says Dan Tobias, a CFP and founder of Passport Wealth Management in Cornelius, North Carolina. “First, get them to understand and appreciate money with paper. Then, when you need to, you can switch to electronic methods,” he says.

That’s the approach he uses for his own three children. He gives them a cash allowance and lets them decide how to spend it, which includes letting them make mistakes.

“Don’t be afraid to let them fail,” Tobias says. Kids might lose a $20 bill, splurge on something that breaks the next day or, in his case, buy a fish and a tank that they soon don’t want anymore. Those mistakes are critical teaching moments, he says, so it’s important parents don’t micromanage their kids’ spending.

Leverage familiar apps

Once children start earning and spending their own money without you nearby, digital payments become more appealing. You can use methods you and your kids may already know, like Apple Wallet, Venmo or other apps already connected to your phone. They are often connected to a parent’s credit card or checking account, unless a child already has their own.

Sarah Behr, a financial planner and owner of Simplify Financial in San Francisco, says apps can be helpful because a parent can closely monitor a child’s spending and “keep the guardrails up” while still giving them the freedom to make their own spending decisions.

If a teen overspends without permission, that can lead to a helpful conversation about budgeting. At the same time, parents can find ways to make sure their own accounts are protected, by using the apps to set spending limits or creating separate accounts with low balances and low credit limits.

Spalding turned to digital payment apps when her teenagers started spending money on their own. She set up a separate bank account with a low balance to limit the potential damage if the account was compromised or a teen overspent.

(Kimberly Palmer shares how she gives money to her teenage daughter.)

Try paid products for more support

Debit cards and apps designed for kids like Greenlight, GoHenry and BusyKid offer additional support for families, such as allowing them to actively manage a budget and chores, but they often come with a fee.

Greenlight, which costs between $5.99 and $14.98 a month, offers parental controls, the ability to assign chores and allowance automation, among other features. “Kids can understand the bigger picture of money management” and also set savings goals for themselves, says Jennifer Seitz, director of education at Greenlight.

Gregg Murset, a CFP and CEO of BusyKid, a debit card and chore app for kids, says the app helps parents teach kids important lessons about tracking money, investing and giving to charity. “That’s what we do as adults — save, invest and share — so we are modeling reality,” he says, adding that kids ages five through 17 can use the app, which costs $4 a month.

Encourage savings

Regardless of the method you choose, saving money should be part of the conversation with your kids, Spalding suggests. When her children were young teenagers, she took them to a local bank to set up a savings account so they could deposit money they had accumulated from babysitting jobs and gifts. She says you could also use an online high-yield savings account to see the money compound more quickly.

Investing in a Roth IRA can be a smart next step for children earning their own money. Behr offered her daughter a savings match up to the amount she contributed to encourage her to save more for the future. “I’m hoping the discipline of this exercise in delayed gratification sinks in,” she says. Teens can save up to the amount of their earned income with a limit of $7,000 for 2024.

With that kind of practice, saving for the future might even become a lifelong habit.

Kimberly Palmer writes for NerdWallet. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimberlypalmer.

The article The Best Ways to Give Money to a Teenager originally appeared on NerdWallet.

​ Orange County Register 

Rams place starting corner Darious Williams on injured reserve

• September 5, 2024

LOS ANGELES — The Rams placed starting cornerback Darious Williams on injured reserve Thursday, ruling him out for at least the first four games of the season.

Williams, who returned to the Rams this offseason as a free agent after two years with the Jaguars, pulled his hamstring during the first week of training camp. He had returned to practice of late and was a limited participant Wednesday.

Head coach Sean McVay said before practice Wednesday that Williams had not suffered any kind of setback in regards to the injury.

“He got his hamstring good earlier in camp, but he’s making progress,” McVay said.

Williams’ absence puts the Rams in a precarious situation at cornerback entering Sunday’s season opener against the Detroit Lions.

Third corner Decobie Durant is dealing with his own hamstring injury and has been limited for three consecutive practices. If he’s unable to play Sunday, the Rams could find themselves relying on undrafted rookies Josh Wallace and Charles Woods to start opposite of Tre’Davious White.

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“That’s just the reality of the NFL and you’re prepared for any situation,” Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula said. “[They are] very mature rookies, ask great questions in meeting rooms. Guys who can take it from the meeting room to the field. … We think both of them can go out there and execute.”

Shula, who deferred questions about Williams’ injury to McVay, added that the Rams haven’t discussed the possibility of adding a free-agent cornerback as of Thursday afternoon.

​ Orange County Register 

Interest rates have dropped, but homeowners are not moving

• September 5, 2024

By Rukmini Callimachi | The New York Times

On an earnings call last month, the CEO of online real estate brokerage Redfin was asked whether he had a contingency plan if interest rates did not come down. His answer was maybe a bit too frank.

“Great question,” Glenn Kelman, the CEO, began on the Aug. 6 call, “Plan B is to drink our own urine or our competitors’ blood.”

A little more than a minute later, he corrected himself, saying that he shouldn’t have used those exact words. But to the analysts on the call, his point was clear: The housing economy is in trouble, and a major reason has been soaring interest rates, which hit a high-water mark of 7.79% last fall.

Since then, the 30-year mortgage rate has dipped into the low 7s, then the high 6s, and as of last week, it fell to 6.35%. The drop — coupled with a “likely” rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its upcoming meeting in September — should spell good news for the housing economy, but a major structural problem remains. Close to 60% of homeowners have outstanding mortgages that are locked in at rates below 4%, according to recently released data from Redfin.

If a homeowner sold and bought a new home in a comparable neighborhood, they would forego a low rate for another that is at least 2.5 percentage points higher. For many homeowners, that simply doesn’t make sense — a phenomenon that economists call the “golden handcuffs.”

Although the recent dip in the mortgage rate has been significant — over 1 point in less than a year — I interviewed seven economists, as well as finance and real estate experts, who say it’s not enough.

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” said Sam Khater, chief economist of Freddie Mac.

A Sisyphean battle

The recent decrease in rates is equivalent to a 2% reduction in the price of the home, according to Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The math is as follows: Take a house priced at the national median, which is around $430,000. The recent drop in interest rates would have shaved $66 off the monthly payment of around $3,435, McCue estimates. Had the interest rate not dropped, that $66 in savings is equivalent to buying the same house for around $424,000.

Although that may sound significant, McCue points out that this year alone, the price of homes has inched up over 4.5%, according to the Case-Shiller index. McCue estimates that rates would need to drop almost another half-point — down to around 6.09% — for homeowners to get back to the payments they would have had in the first month of this year.

He paints a picture of a Sisyphean battle: Rates have come down, reducing the cost of a monthly mortgage, but even as they fall, prices continue to rise, negating any savings.

“The bottom line,” said McCue, “It’s not enough to kind of make up for these rising prices.”

Sidelines

As many as 800,000 fewer moves occurred last year, a direct result of what economists call the “rate lock effect” or the “golden handcuffs,” according to a paper published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Growing families have postponed moving to more spacious homes. Households hoping to trade up have held off. And a lot of people have been sitting on the sidelines, waiting and watching.

Yet, people are itching to pack their bags, according to a survey of more than 1,000 homeowners published Wednesday by Point, a home equity startup. About 72% of homeowners have a desire to move, up from 35% last year, the startup found.

Sean Adu-Gyamfi, 33, an associate broker with Coldwell Banker Warburg, sets aside an hour each day to send out text messages to the list of contacts and fence-sitters he has amassed in the months since interest rates hit a two-decade high.

His messages mostly went out into the ether. “Very little engagement,” he said.

Then, as rates tumbled to 6.49% from 6.73% in the first half of August, he began hearing back.

Among the people who responded was 31-year-old Christina Branche: “I was waiting for rates to drop for sure,” she said, describing how she was at work at Citigroup, where she is an in-house counsel, when she received an alert on her phone about the fall in rates.

When Adu-Gyamfi’s message popped up sometime after, she decided to resume her search — she had been looking for more than a year and had given up, frustrated at the double whammy of high interest rates and high home prices.

At her broker’s urging, she began looking in the upper reaches of the New York City borough of Manhattan, including a neighborhood not far from the Cloisters, an outpost of the Met, where a listing caught her eye: a two-bedroom co-op in the low $700,000s.

But Branche fits into a unique category: a first-time homebuyer. She has no former mortgage to give up, hence no “golden handcuffs.”

The part of the housing economy that has been hit the hardest is the so-called “resale” sector — homes that were previously owned and are sold again.

“That segment of the market is what has really evaporated,” said Lance Lambert, co-founder of news-and-research platform ResiClub and one of the analysts on the Redfin earnings call last month, who previously reported on Kelman’s colorful comments.

Existing home sales remain at the lowest they have been since 1995, but the country has almost 70 more million people today, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

Five D’s

John Campbell, a research analyst who focuses on real estate-related stocks at investment research firm Stephens Inc., refers to the five “D’s” that drive the housing economy even in times like these, when the finances of homebuying are out of whack: diamonds (or marriage), diapers (or having children), divorce, downsizing and death. Major life events, he said, will eventually overwhelm a subset of families who are trying to wait it out.

“Like you’re not going to live in your house with your ex-wife, right, and her new husband,” Campbell said.

It was the last of the D’s — death — that finally made things come together for Branche: The co-op that she fell in love with was being offered at a competitive price because its former owner had died.

When she got off the subway in the Hudson Heights neighborhood, it felt familiar — and then she realized why: An avid runner, she had gone for long runs along the Hudson River ending at Fort Tryon Park, a slice of green that is walking distance to the co-op.

The apartment has a curved archway and a blue mosaic tile in the bathroom that reminded her of the bathhouses she had visited in Istanbul. She loved it immediately: “I’m not a grand person, but it makes you feel grand,” she said.

In August, her offer was accepted in a convergence of two forces — lower interest rates and one of the D’s.

Since the CEO of Redfin made his blunt comments, the company’s stock price has jumped from just over $7 to just under $10 — a far cry from its height of $96 a few years ago, but also significantly better than earlier this summer.

​ Orange County Register 

Bunk beds are the trendiest new amenity at luxury hotels

• September 5, 2024

Carlye Wisel | (TNS) Bloomberg News

The new trend at luxury hotels draws inspiration from the least luxurious accommodations on Earth: dorm rooms.

At a time when consumers are looking for better value and hotels are dealing with unprecedented demand, the bunk bed has emerged a win-win design solution.

“In markets with really high room rates and really high occupancies, adding a few more beds to a room means you can fit more people in it and charge more,” says Alastair Thomann, chief executive officer of the hip hostel brand Generator, where custom bunks now stretch three high in some locations. “Suddenly, a little villa which used to sleep two or three can sleep five because they’re doubling up. The space allows it. So that’s the game, really — that’s the economics behind it.”

But it isn’t just well-designed hostels that are thinking vertically: It’s luxury and lifestyle brands that range from JW Marriott to Montage and Moxy. And the demand isn’t coming from budget travelers but from parents who want a luxe vibe without paying for multiple rooms. In these cases, bunk beds provide a glorious and rare compromise. They allow families to room together without getting in one another’s way.

Thomann, who got in early on the bunk bed trend, says the uptick in demand has been so sharp — from hoteliers and consumers alike — that it’s driven up purchasing costs and created a supply chain crisis. As a result, he says he now spends 40% more per bunk bed than he did five years ago. And there are so many orders that factories can’t keep up the production, leaving hotels waiting two to three times longer for their orders. Thomann says it’s like witnessing the emergence of a new cottage industry. “The companies that manufacture for us are producing fantastic numbers,” he says. “Their sales guys are really happy.”

With luxury bedding and cozy accommodations, these posh hotel bunks are a far cry from your teenage backpacking days. Here are some high-capacity alternatives for your next family getaway.

Tourists, North Adams, Massachusetts

This Berkshires weekend escape — a 48-room converted motel whose owners include the former bassist of Wilco — is all about comfortable minimalism, with a white-and-blond-wood look that’s full of clean lines and rustic accents. For a particularly smart use of space, book into the Caravan rooms: They have a lofted wooden bunk tucked between the king bed and the wall. Sure, it’s meant as a sleeping nook, but the boxy design feels almost like a fort or play area for kids who need a break from all the hikes, art classes and activities on offer. The bunks are such a hit that when Tourists designed a new cluster of rental homes near the main hotel earlier this year, they included a five-bedroom option with its very own bunked room. Caravan rooms from $196 per night.

Moxy Hotels, New York, New York

“There is something about bunk beds that is inherently playful and camplike,” says Mitchell Hochberg, president of real estate group Lightstone and developer of Moxy Hotels in New York City. He thought the quad bunk accommodations at the 612-room Times Square property, which opened in 2017, would appeal to young travelers who’d also enjoy the nightly DJs at the rooftop bar. But the rooms, outfitted with two sets of twin bunks, have been a hit with a much wider demographic. “Much to our surprise, they’ve been embraced by a broader array of guests — everyone from families with small children to bachelorette parties,” he says.

The bunks were added as a riff on Yabu Pushelberg’s initial design for the hotel, which had an urban camping theme—think pegboard closets, retro phones and metal-framed tray tables with ceramic campfire mugs. They’ve proved so successful that the brand has added them to several other locations around the city, including the Moxy Hotels in the Lower East Side, Chelsea, the East Village and Williamsburg. “The rooms become a win-win to both travelers and hotel owners, notes Hochberg. “They afford a lower rate to the individual traveler [in cases where multiple friends are splitting the nightly rate] and, in the aggregate, a higher rate to the hotel.” Twin bunk rooms from $264.

Beaverbrook, Surrey Hills, UK

Just 20 miles outside London is this family-friendly manor with 470 acres in the scenic Surrey Hills. Since December 2023, it’s also been home to the Village, a collection of cottages inspired by literary and artistic giants, including C.S. Lewis and the Brontë sisters. Of the 21 rooms, a half-dozen are whimsically outfitted suites that feature bunks: pastel-colored beds adorned with sweet checkered blankets and seersucker privacy curtains.

The elevated design of the bunks proves that Beaverbrook is a place that knows how to play to fancy kids—or perhaps fancy parents. On any given week there are G-rated film screenings in a private cinema, mini bento box lunches in the dining room and a full slate of camplike weekend activities, such as survival skills training and beekeeping. That means parents get to explore the grounds on their own, whether that means enjoying an afternoon spritz at Sit Frank’s Bar, which is lined floor to ceiling in botanical paintings, or taking a jaunt to the checkerboard-tiled pool at the Coach House Spa. Village Suites from $1,512.

JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes, Orlando, Florida

Bunk suites have proved so popular among theme-park-bound families in central Florida that the JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes doubled its inventory just two years after first introducing them in 2022. “As we continue to see the rise of multigenerational travel, the need and desire for this style of room continues to grow,” says Michael Scioscia, the hotel’s general manager. Guests in the hotel’s two-bedroom suites — which have a king bed and twin bunks in one bedroom and a king bed in the other — get a dedicated hospitality team and VIP check-in experience. (Consider it a leg up on the chaos of Disney and Universal.) The newly renovated on-site water park is another perk: Its three waterslides, lazy river and aquatic ropes course rival the options at its theme-park neighbors. Two-bedroom suites from $1,741.

Montage Los Cabos, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

The two- and three-bedroom residences at this Baja Peninsula getaway take bunk beds to another level — a wider one. Here, three sets of bunks contain a total of six queen-size mattresses — no twins — which may be the plushest way to sleep a half-dozen cousins under one roof.

“It’s a great way to turn a room into a fun, larger sleepover experience,” says Azadeh Hawkins, global creative director for Montage International, which has also installed bunks at its Big Sky, Montana location. In Cabo, it takes an already kid-friendly resort over the edge. When larger broods aren’t splashing in the villa’s private plunge pool or running on the white sand beaches of Santa Marina Bay, their younger members can partake of activities such as paintball, mountain biking and archery. As for the adults, the hotel has a focus on mezcal, using it for “renewal” massages at the spa, putting it into Benedicts at breakfast and offering classes on mixing the spirit into cocktails. Three-bedroom residences with bunks from $4,370.

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©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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