Eli Lilly\u2019s office in San Diego, Nov. 21, 2025.<\/p>\n
Mike Blake | Reuters<\/p>\n
The U.S. government on Tuesday named the 15 new\u00a0drugs\u00a0targeted for\u00a0Medicare\u00a0price\u00a0negotiations for 2028, including Gilead Sciences’\u00a0HIV\u00a0drug Biktarvy and Pfizer’s\u00a0arthritis\u00a0treatment Xeljanz.<\/p>\n
It is the third round of\u00a0drugs\u00a0subject to former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which allowed the government to negotiate\u00a0prices of some\u00a0drugs\u00a0purchased by the U.S.\u00a0Medicare\u00a0health program for people aged 65 and older or with disabilities.<\/p>\n
Despite the industry’s longstanding opposition to the law and multiple failed lawsuits, the first negotiated\u00a0prices on 10\u00a0drugs\u00a0sold in pharmacies went into effect this year.<\/p>\n
The 2028 list also includes products that are administered in doctors’ offices or hospitals, such as Novartis\u00a0psoriasis drug Cosentyx and Botox, which is made by AbbVie.<\/p>\n
Other medications up for negotiation include Eli Lilly’s\u00a0GLP-1 diabetes drug Trulicity.<\/p>\n
“With prior rounds of pricing negotiations reasonable, and several of these medicines set to lose exclusivity in the near-term, we continue to expect that the impacts will be manageable,” said BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman.<\/p>\n
The U.S.\u00a0Medicare\u00a0health plan said last year that the\u00a0prices it had negotiated for 15\u00a0drugs\u00a0starting in 2027 would save the program 36% on those medications compared with recent annual spending, or about $8.5 billion.<\/p>\n
Shares of Gilead, Lilly, AbbVie, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer\u00a0and Bristol Myers were all up nearly 2% in after-hours trading.<\/p>\n
Gilead’s\u00a0HIV\u00a0treatment Biktarvy, which had 2024 sales of $13.4 billion, had been expected to be on the negotiation list. The company in October said it had reached settlements with three generic manufacturers, extending the drug’s U.S. patent coverage to April 2036.<\/p>\n
“While we expect Biktarvy will likely be eligible for IRA\u00a0price\u00a0negotiations beginning in 2028, only a low-20% of\u00a0US\u00a0sales are expected to be exposed,” JP Morgan said in a research note at that time.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Centers for Medicaid and\u00a0Medicare\u00a0Services said the selected\u00a0drugs\u00a0accounted for $27 billion in spending in the 12 months ended October 31, 2025. The\u00a0drugs\u00a0are also selected based on being either seven or 11 years out from being approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and for which there is no generic or biosimilar alternative.<\/p>\n
Drugmakers have continued to contest the legislation in courts.<\/p>\n
“The IRA continues to\u202fshow\u202f why \u202fgovernment\u202fprice\u00a0setting is\u202f the wrong approach for Americans,” Elizabeth Carpenter, head of policy and research at trade group PhRMA, said in a statement. “Since the law took effect, seniors have faced higher costs, fewer choices and more barriers to care.”<\/p>\n
A Novartis spokesperson said its two\u00a0drugs, Cosentyx for inflammatory diseases and Kisqali for breast cancer, bring significant value to patients and that the law allowing negotiation will have long-lasting consequences for patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eli Lilly\u2019s office in San Diego, Nov. 21, 2025. Mike Blake | Reuters The U.S. government on Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,507,4335,174,137,508,490],"class_list":["post-442895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-biotech-and-pharmaceuticals","tag-biotechnology","tag-business-news","tag-health","tag-health-care-industry","tag-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}