Johnson & Johnson and its Janssen pharmaceutical companies added their name July 18 to the growing list of biopharma companies and organizations challenging the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) mandated drug price negotiations.
Showing that much lower brand prices are possible, even in the U.S., Theracosbio Inc. announced July 13 that its diabetes drug, Brenzavvy (bexagliflozin), is coming to the U.S. market through the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. at a monthly price that’s less than the copay most patients have to pay for other drugs in the class. A new molecular entity approved in January to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes, Brenzavvy is an oral, once-daily sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor that will be available through Cost Plus Drugs with a monthly price tag of $47.85, plus shipping and handling. A 30-day supply of other SGLT2 inhibitors costs hundreds of dollars, with some approaching $600 a month.
The tension of clashing politics, policies and prescription drug pricing is coming to a head as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) acts on his threat to hold presidential appointments in the health arena hostage until President Joe Biden commits to do more to bring down drug prices.
In releasing a revised guidance June 30 detailing the requirements of the new Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services addressed some of the issues raised in recent constitutional challenges to the guidance and the underlying negotiation provision in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Using his new platform as chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is again pushing the Biden administration to reinstate, and strengthen, a “reasonable pricing clause” in all future research agreements involving government agencies, especially those funding drug R&D.
The question wasn’t if, but when and how, someone would challenge the Medicare negotiation provision laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that was signed into U.S. law last year.
Eli Lilly and Co. is paying $13.5 million to bow out of a class action lawsuit that claimed the list price of several insulin analogue products was fraudulent. Lilly also committed to capping the monthly patient out-of-pocket cost at $35 for its insulin products for at least four years, bringing the total value of the settlement, announced May 26, to more than $500 million, according to the attorneys who filed the class action on behalf of patients in 2017.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is flexing its new authority in a proposed rule intended to clamp down on drug prices by providing more transparency in the Medicaid program.
A day after grilling top executives from the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in the U.S. about their business practices and the impact they have on prescription drug prices, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 18-3 May 11 to favorably report the bipartisan PBM Reform Act to the full Senate.
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) may look like domestic affair, but the drug price controls it is bringing in are set to impact the biopharma sector across the globe.
