IRA

AstraZeneca joins Johnson & Johnson and Bristol Myers Squibb in appealing a previous legal loss for its challenge to the government’s drug price-setting program.

A federal judge ruled last week that the U.S. government can use its economic standing as a bulk purchaser to negotiate for better deals, handing Boehringer Ingelheim a loss in its legal challenge to the Inflation Reduction Act.

With appeals and additional cases still pending, it remains to be seen if any of the arguments being brought by biopharma companies against the U.S. government will hold up in court.

J&J and BMS’ challenges to Medicare drug price negotiations shut down in federal court less than a week after BMS announced it was laying off more than 2,000 employees.

This week’s legal losses by J&J and BMS reinforce the notion that Medicare drug price negotiation is here to stay, and investors continue to favor biologics over small molecules.

Pharma CEOs claim lifesaving drugs wouldn’t be possible without high prices — an assertion that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Many promising small molecules have lost significant investment appeal as a result of lopsided incentives favoring biologics in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Congress and the Biden administration have set their sights on lowering prescription drug costs.

Sanders says he wants Novo Nordisk to “do the right thing” and lower the costs of Ozempic and Wegovy. But only the Inflation Reduction Act can achieve that.

The pharmaceutical industry is facing critical attention, particularly around drug pricing and development costs. Drug development cost is about 10% of the total healthcare spend in the United States. Broader issues such as local monopolies, utilization, unit, and costs and local monopolies, politics and a fragmented payer system contribute to the increasingly high costs to patients.