United States—The Biden administration disclosed on Tuesday that it has responded to pricing negotiation offers received from ten high-price drug manufacturers selected by U.S. Medicare for its first round of negotiations, but it refused to give details.
Price Negotiation
The Inflation Reduction Act for 2022 includes parts that allow the Medicare program to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs that were mostly overpriced for the federal health care program for Americans aged 65 and older and the disabled, as reported by Reuters.
In August, the CMS, which is the agency supervising Medicare, named the first ten drugs that will be negotiated and expressed its initial price offers in February. The involved companies needed to answer by March 1. They all did.
Forward for Negotiations
CMS plans to hold three more meetings on the negotiation rounds with participants on August 1 to announce the Fair Price. The contracts will be enforced as per their agreements, which stipulate the same in 2026.
Drug Manufacturing Landscape
As the study remained limited to highly scientific knowledge obtained by companies such as BMY.N, Pfizer (PFE.N), Merck & Co (MRK.N), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), AbbVie (ABBV.N), Amgen (AMGN.O), Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly (LLY.N), and others, drug manufacturing remained largely science, as reported by Reuters.
Legal Developments
A judge with the court of Delaware was in the federal court who, on March 1, ruled against AstraZeneca PLC. To the US, AZN.L allegations regarding government intrusions in oil prices, for the third time, successfully suing government entities.