Medicare will target Eliquis, Jardiance and 8 other drugs for price cuts

Selena Simmons-Duffin, Sydney Lupkin, Deepa Shivaram | NPR

August 29th, 2023

President Biden hugs Steven Hadfield, a Medicare recipient who takes expensive drugs, at an event on prescription drug costs at the White House on Aug. 29.
Evan Vucci / Evan Vucci

The Biden administration released its list of the first 10 drugs that Medicare will target for price cuts – reductions the government plans to achieve by negotiating the prices with drug makers.

The list includes Eliquis, a 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 used by more than 1.3 million people on Medicare at a cost to the program of more than $6 billion.

Diabetes drugs Jardiance, Januvia, Farxiga and Fiasp/Novolog are on the list, as are Enbrel and Stelara, drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease. Imbruvica, a drug that treats blood cancers, is also on the list.

The power to negotiate the prices comes from the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year. The actual negotiations will occur during the next two years, with prices announced by Sept. 1, 2024. But the lower prices for the drugs won’t begin until 2026.

Drug makers have said the new provisions are unconstitutional and have filed a series of lawsuits to try to stop them. They have argued it will hamper innovation and new cures.

“This is going to be a heavyweight battle,” said Ameet Sarpatwari, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

Average prices for prescription drugs in the United States are much higher than in other parts of the world. While other countries have determined methods for setting prices for drugs, the U.S. government is starting from scratch.

“That includes a lot of back and forth with the drug companies about things like their research and development costs and the cost of manufacturing the drugs,” as well as federal investments in research that helped develop the drugs, said Stacie Dusetzina of Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine

The law allows for more prices to be negotiated for 2027 and subsequent years.