Several health care advocacy organizations, including Patients for Affordable Drugs and Health Care for America Now, are pushing for policies that will help lower the financial burden of patients. Both organizations supported the Inflation Reduction Act, a law signed by President Joe Biden that aims to reduce prescription drug prices.
After decades of prescription drug corporations price-gouging patients on some of the most commonly prescribed medicines in Medicare, today’s news about lowered prices through Medicare negotiations is a milestone for patients, providers and taxpayers alike. These first ten drugs chosen earlier this year for negotiated prices are among those with highest total spending in Medicare Part D and the highest out of pocket costs for patients. Thanks to Medicare negotiations being implemented under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, patients in the future will save between 38 and 79 percent on these medicines. When the negotiated prices go into effect in 2026, people enrolled in Medicare Part D are estimated to save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs. If the negotiated prices had been in effect during 2023, Medicare would have saved an estimated $6 billion.
President Biden did what his predecessor only talked about: he signed a new law that finally forces prescription drug corporations to negotiate lower prices in Medicare after years of padding their profits by price-gouging consumers on everything from insulin to heart medicines. Medicare negotiations will save patients and taxpayers billions over the coming decade once the law is fully implemented. The new law also penalizes drug corporations for increasing prices faster than inflation and caps the annual out-of-pocket costs that seniors and people with disabilities pay at the pharmacy for the first time.
U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly’s decision today to dismiss AstraZeneca’s frivolous lawsuit is another big will for the Biden Administration and the millions of Medicare enrollees who will get lower drug costs under the new Medicare reforms passed in 2022. This is the third favorable ruling against legal challenges to Medicare negotiations and we remain confident that we’ll see a similar ruling in the upcoming hearing on March 7th in the New Jersey hearing during which Bristol Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson will present their oral arguments against Medicare negotiations.
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most opaque industries in America, and they take advantage of this lack of transparency by setting ever-higher prices for lifesaving prescription drugs like insulin. But provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act are curtailing the exorbitant price-gouging strategies that the pharmaceutical industry uses to pump up their profit margins at the expense of seniors and people with disabilities who use Medicare.
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Continue reading “Pitchfork Economics: Medicare Drug Price Negotiations with Margarida Jorge”
After decades of fighting PhRMA’s lobbyists, patients, advocates and lawmakers scored a huge victory for lower drug prices with passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a new law that includes Medicare reforms that take on drug corporations’ price-gouging and make medicines more affordable for millions.
For the first time, Medicare isn’t just accepting whatever prices the drug corporations set for expensive and widely used drugs in Part D like Xareto and Eliquis–instead, the agency, newly empowered under the new Medicare negotiations law, will propose lower prices for ten of the most expensive drugs in Medicare Part D to kick off the negotiations process.
