The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has responded to counteroffers from drugmakers and invited them to participate in further Medicare drug price negotiations.
The announcement follows counteroffer submissions from ten pharmaceutical companies taking part in the Medicare drug price negotiation at the beginning of March.
Initially sent on the 1 February by the HHS, offers were sent to pharmaceutical companies in an ongoing effort to lower drug prices in the US as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
In addition, the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) released new data portraying how key IRA provisions could lower costs for women enrolled in Medicare.
The findings showed that around 733,000 women enrolled in Medicare Part D and Part B would have benefitted from the IRA’s $35 per month cap on cost sharing for Medicare-covered insulin products in 2020 and around two million women would not have had any out-of-pocket costs for their recommended Part D-covered adult vaccines in 2021.
Due to the law’s redesign of the Medicare Part D benefit, the ASPE revealed that about 857,000 women who are currently not enrolled in the Extra Help programme are expected to save $1,000 or more in 2025.
Xavier Becerra, HHS secretary, commented: “The IRA is making prescription drugs more affordable for women with Medicare.
“Now that we are negotiating directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers to bring down the price of prescription drugs for people on Medicare, there will be even more savings in the future.”
First confirmed in August 2023, the ten medicines subject to the first round of Medicare pricing negotiations included therapies for diabetes, heart failure, immunological disorders, cancer and anticoagulants, involving Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Novartis, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson.
Each company is eligible to meet with CMS up to three times for further negotiations before final price negotiations end on 1 August 2024 and, as confirmed by the Biden-Harris Administration, new prices are set to be announced by 1 September 2024 and will go into effect at the beginning of 2026.