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Joe Biden returned to the campaign trail on Thursday in a victory lap for his administration’s efforts to negotiate lower drug prices, as the White House announced it had struck deals with pharmaceutical groups to cap prices on 10 of the country’s most expensive medicines.
Thursday’s event in Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC, also marked the first time that Biden had shared the stage with Kamala Harris, his vice-president, since he announced last month that he was suspending his re-election bid and endorsing Harris as his successor.
“Folks, I have an incredible partner, the progress we have made, and she is going to make one hell of a president,” Biden said, vowing Harris would continue his efforts to cut the cost of prescription drugs for consumers if given another four years in the White House.
The Biden administration’s programme to cap the costs of prescription medicines came about as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the administration’s signature piece of legislation, and will be trumpeted by Harris as she competes with Donald Trump in this year’s White House race.
The White House said on Thursday that the programme would save Americans $7.5bn in drug costs in its first year. The White House also said the price caps would reduce net spending for Medicare, the public health insurance programme for pensioners, by 22 per cent, or $6bn, following a year of negotiation with leading pharmaceutical groups, including Johnson & Johnson and Merck.
Based on the costs of the 10 medicines last year, the pricing limits would also reduce out-of-pocket costs for patients on the federal health insurance programme by $1.5bn, the White House said.
Harris, who has pledged to “take on Big Pharma” at campaign rallies, said in a statement that she had been “proud to cast the tiebreaking vote” that allowed the IRA to pass the Senate two years ago.
Biden on Thursday said Republicans wanted to repeal his administration’s efforts to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and “let Big Pharma back to charging whatever they want.”
“Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is,” he added, in a reference to the Trump-aligned policy platform from the Heritage Foundation think-tank. “Beat the hell out of them,”
The group of drugs targeted by the first negotiations include cancer, heart disease and diabetes medications produced by 11 different drugmakers, some of which share rights to certain medicines. They collectively cost Medicare $50.4bn in gross expenditure excluding rebates and discounts last year.
Since selecting the initial 10 drugs, which will be subject to price caps from 2026, the US government has had to face more than a dozen lawsuits brought by industry groups opposing the new powers. The reforms also cap out-of-pocket costs for Medicare patients at $2,000.
Negotiated discounts from list prices varied from 79 per cent for Merck’s Januvia diabetes medication to as low as 38 per cent for Imbruvica, a blood cancer treatment co-produced by AbbVie and J&J. Share prices of the drugmakers affected by the reforms were largely unchanged.
The expected Medicare savings surpassed the initial projections of the Congressional Budget Office, which predicted that the reforms would save the programme $3.7bn in their inaugural year.
Up to 50 more drugs, possibly including the blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic, will be targeted across three rounds of price negotiations between now and 2027. The negotiations are expected to save the government $100bn over the next decade, according to the CBO.
From 2027, 20 additional drugs each year will be eligible for price negotiations. A drug’s eligibility is based on average price and competition.
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The pharmaceutical industry has vociferously opposed the price controls, arguing that they will reduce funding for research and development.
Stephen Ubl, chief executive of industry lobbyist PhRMA, said the scheme was an attempt “to drive political headlines, but patients will be disappointed when they find out what it means for them”, adding that there were no assurances patients’ out-of-pocket costs will be reduced as no controls were placed on insurers and industry middlemen.
“The reality of the IRA’s government price setting for US patients will be higher costs, and as seen in other countries with government-dictated prices, restricted access and fewer medicines,” said a J&J spokesperson.
Type-2 diabetes medication Jardiance, jointly manufactured by Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim; J&J’s anti-clotting drug Xarelto and Amgen’s autoimmune disease medication Enbrel are among the other drugs affected by the first round of price caps. As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, insulin costs were also capped at $35 a month.
Source link : https://www.ft.com/content/718b52e8-9c57-4dcf-b2f4-84cf8d7da21c
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Publish date : 2024-08-15 00:09:00
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