The Biden administration announced a list of ten prescription drugs on Tuesday that would be subject to the first-ever price negotiations by the United States’ Medicare health-care program, which covers 66 million people.
The list of medications includes the leukemia medicine Imbruvica from AbbVie and the Eliquis rivals Xarelto from Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. Other medications are J&J’s arthritis and Crohn’s disease medication Stelara, Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly’s diabetic medication Jardiance, and Amgen’s Enbrel for rheumatoid arthritis, as well as insulin from Novo Nordisk.
The ten medications, for which the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid $50.5 billion between June 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023, were the ones that qualified for negotiation under under President Joe Biden’s brainchild Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed into law last year. That amounted to nearly 20% of the entire cost of medications covered by the Part D of Medicare’s prescription drug program.
“There is no reason why Americans should be forced to pay more than any developed nation for life-saving prescriptions just to pad Big Pharma’s pockets,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
Up to 9 million seniors who presently spend up to $6,497 out-of-pocket annually for these medicines, according to the White House, would see a reduction in drug expenditures once the agreed pricing are put into effect.
Prescription medicine costs are higher for Americans than for patients in any other industrialized country. The program stipulates that a drug’s list price must be reduced by at least 25%, but the government may still negotiate for further reductions.
The White House’s move is expected to save the lives of at least 94 thousand elderly people who would otherwise die prematurely, helping 3.5 million elderly people who give up or take only part of their life-saving medications and do the treatments in full.
