IRA
Price-negotiation provisions that are out of step with reality are discouraging funders and Big Pharma partners from investing in potentially transformative therapies. Fixing some of the unintended consequences of the IRA will clear the way for innovative medicines to reach patients in need.
President Trump also refused to promise pharma execs that he would hamstring the IRA’s drug negotiation program.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has named Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, Ozempic and Rybelsus as part of the second round of the IRA drug price negotiation program, even as the pharma challenges the program.
Boehringer Ingelheim’s trio of late-stage schizophrenia failures on Thursday came a day after the Department of Health and Human Services hit back on the pharma’s legal challenge to the IRA’s drug price negotiation program.
Concurrently, a preprint from the industry-backed Vital Transformation found a 50% drop in company investments into small-molecule drug development.
A week after dining with Trump and his team at Mar-a-Lago, leaders at Pfizer and Eli Lilly have publicly stated that they intend to collaborate with the incoming administration on key issues affecting the pharma industry.
The EPIC Act has been proposed with bipartisan and industry support to give small molecule drugs the same protection against price negotiation as biologics, but concerns over how to balance the federal budget could prevent a short-term fix to the IRA.
GSK’s departure comes as the industry anticipates the incoming Trump administration and as it continues to grapple with the threat of the BIOSECURE Act and losses of legal challenges to the IRA’s drug price negotiation program.
The Big Pharma companies made a last-ditch effort asking a U.S. appeals court to reconsider their lawsuits against the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare drug price negotiations, which they contend infringe on their constitutional rights.
With Friday’s ruling by New Jersey District Judge Zahid Quraishi, Novartis joins a growing list of pharmaceutical companies that have failed in their legal challenges to the Inflation Reduction Act.