This week, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the US government moved forward to directly negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare Part D recipients (including Medicare Advantage) to take effect in 2026. The initial list of 10 medications include a number of heavily advertised drugs produced by the biggest pharmaceutical companies. These include medications for blood clots, heart failure, kidney disease, arthritis and diabetes. These 10 are used by nearly 10 million people covered by Medicare Part D. Surveys have repeatedly shown that a large majority of Americans...

A year ago, Congress overhauled how drugs for older Americans are paid for, giving Medicare the power to bargain with drug makers over prices. It’s the biggest change to health care for more than a decade, and this week, the Biden administration began to implement it.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who covers health policy for The Times, discusses the decades of struggle behind the change and Rebecca Robbins, who covers the pharmaceutical industry, explains its potential to reshape the business of drugs in America.

President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act allows Medicare to negotiate some drug prices, a change that the pharmaceutical industry and Republicans have opposed for decades. As he heads toward a re-election campaign next year, President Biden is betting that his success in pushing for policies intended to lower health care costs for millions of Americans will be rewarded by voters at the ballot box. In speech after speech, Mr. Biden talks about capping the cost of insulin at $35, putting new limits on medical expenses for seniors, making some vaccines free...

The government announced the first ten drugs that are the subject of price negotiations between the U.S. government and private companies. For decades, the government has been prohibited from negotiating the price it pays through Medicare for medication — until the rule was relaxed under the Affordable Care Act. The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or...

Every month, Dawn LaGuerre has to decide which bills she's going to pay or if she needs to cut back on groceries to be able to afford her monthly medications. The 63-year-old from Utica, New York -- 90 miles northwest of Albany -- takes multiple drugs including Januvia and Novalog to manage her type 2 diabetes. Her husband, David, 61, also takes Januvia. But her prescriptions have increased from $100 monthly to between $350 and $450 a month, leaving the couple to make tough financial decisions. "Oftentimes, we do have...

A quirk of American law long barred Medicare, the public-health insurer for the elderly, from negotiating with drug firms over prices. Even as the National Health Service in Britain and other government procurers haggled with companies to bring costs down, one of the world’s biggest spenders on drugs was forced to be a price-taker. Americans, meanwhile, spend more than twice as much on prescription medicines as people in other rich countries. In an attempt to lower the bill the Inflation Reduction Act, signed by Joe Biden last year, now allows...

So, what would the new regulations do? If they are implemented, according to National Review’s Jeff Zymeri, drug development will drop off: “The CBO has predicted that the scheme provided for under the IRA would lead to a manufacturer-revenue loss of 15 percent. Such a cut in CBO’s predicted 45 new drugs per year would suggest around 6.8 fewer drugs per year, totaling around 121 lost over the 18-year horizon, as one report estimated.” The drugs most likely to disappear would be drugs that target rare conditions, and thus have...

The Biden administration has picked the first 10 high-priced prescription drugs subject to federal price negotiations, taking a swipe at the powerful pharmaceutical industry. It marks a major turning point in a long-fought battle to control ever-rising drug prices for seniors and, eventually, other Americans. Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Congress gave the federal government the power to negotiate prices for certain high-cost drugs under Medicare. The list of drugs selected by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will grow over time.

In this photo illustration, Eliquis is made available to customers at the New City Halsted Pharmacy on August 29, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. Medicare is set to negotiate prices for 10 different drugs with manufacturers in a bid to make those costly treatments more affordable for older Americans – a process the pharmaceutical industry fiercely opposes. But analysts say the drug price talks will likely have a muted financial impact on manufacturers, at least for this first round of prescription medicines. That's because other factors are already expected to weigh...

Citation From the August 29, 2023, edition of Westwood One's The Mark Levin Show MARK LEVIN (HOST): Contrary to how it's been framed, the Inflation Reduction Act's drug pricing program doesn't involve negotiated – negotiation in any ordinary sense of the word. If a drug developer disagrees with the dictate price, our only options are to pay impossibly high penalties or withdraw all our medicines from Medicare and Medicaid altogether. That's not a choice. We'd never do that to our patients. So that essentially lets the government set any price...