First 10 drugs set for Medicare price negotiations: Will pharma participate?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Tuesday morning announced the must-anticipated list of the first 10 drugs selected for Medicare price negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act.

The list includes Eliquis, a Bristol-Myers Squibb drug to prevent blood clots used by more than 3.7 million people on Medicare in the year ending May 2023 at a cost of $16.4 billion to the program, and Xarelto, another blood thinner, made by Johnson & Johnson that is used by more than 1.3 million people on Medicare at a cost to the program of more than $6 billion.

Diabetes drugs Jardiance (Boehringer Ingelheim), Januvia (Merck), Farxiga (AstraZeneca) and Fiasp and Novolog (Novo Nordisk) are on the list, as are Enbrel (Amgen) and Stelara (Janssen), drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease. Entresto, a Novartis drug used to treat types of heart failure and Imbruvica, an AbbVie drug that treats blood cancers, are also on the list.