Hello! The first round of Medicare drug price negotiations is over – but we still don’t know the ultimate prices that the U.S. government and pharmaceutical firms agreed to.
Medicare will announce the newly negotiated prices for ten drugs in early September. These prices will then take effect in 2026.
Still, drug firms seem less concerned in regards to the impact of the brand new negotiated prices on their business than they’ve in recent months, at the very least within the short term. They all agree that Medicare drug price negotiations pose a long-term threat to drug innovation and pharmaceutical industry profits, but the approaching turmoil has subsided somewhat.
This relies on comments made by executives during recent conference calls on the quarterly results of Bristol-Myers Squibb And Johnson & Johnsonincluding firms.
President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act gave Medicare the authority to barter drug prices directly with manufacturers for the primary time within the federal program's nearly 60-year history. The goal of the method is to make expensive drugs cheaper for older Americans.
On July 26, Christopher Boerner, CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb, confirmed that the corporate had received the federal government’s final price for its blood thinner Eliquis, which it’s developing with Pfizer.
He said that now that the corporate has seen that price, it’s “increasingly confident that we can navigate the treatment impact of Medicare drug pricing negotiations.” Bristol Myers will provide more details in regards to the expected impact on its investor relations website once Medicare publicly proclaims the ultimate prices, Boerner said.
In the meantime, AbbVie CEO Robert Michael had announced a day earlier that the pharmaceutical company had included the expected sales losses of its best-selling leukemia drug Imbruvica in its financial forecasts.
“We have made it clear that, while taking these impacts into account, we continue to expect to achieve our long-term goals,” Michael said in the corporate's quarterly earnings conference call.
On July 17, Jennifer Taubert, chief executive of J&J Worldwide, similarly said the corporate's long-term growth prospects “still look very good to us today” after seeing negotiated prices for blood thinner Xarelto and psoriasis drug Stelara.
Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan said on July 18 that the near-term impact of Medicare pricing negotiations for our first drugs “may be manageable.” The company's heart failure drug, Entresto, is one in every of the drugs chosen for negotiations.
But Narasimhan said the policy was “really not good for innovation” in the long term. [or] good for patients” in the USA
“I believe it is rather necessary to say that the policy shouldn’t be good. It is bad for American patients, it’s bad for innovation and [I] I sincerely hope it’s going to be corrected,” he said.
Similarly, executives of all pharmaceutical companies emphasized their opposition to price negotiations in Medicare drug programs in their respective conference calls to announce quarterly earnings.
“We proceed to imagine that arbitrary government pricing of life-saving medicines shouldn’t be good policy,” Bristol Myers Squibb's Boerner said on the company's earnings call. “Regardless of the short-term dynamics, we remain very concerned in regards to the long-term impact of the IRA on innovation.”
The lawsuits brought by Merck and Novartis against the negotiations are still awaiting decision in district courts. In any case, the claims overlap with lawsuits brought by Novo Nordisk, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, J&J and industry associations that have been dismissed in recent months.
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Latest technology in healthcare
Lights, camera, action!
If you're like me, healthcare is probably not the first thing you associate with the entertainment industry. Unless, of course, we're talking about the hit medical drama “Grey's Anatomy.”
But Northwell Health, the largest health care system in New York State, is breaking new ground in the entertainment world. At the end of July started a television and film production studio called Northwell Studios.
The goal is not to turn the studio into a money-making machine, says Ramon Soto, chief marketing officer at Northwell Health. Rather, the health system plans to ensure that most projects remain cost-neutral.
Instead, Soto said, the studio was created to raise awareness of Northwell, especially since the company operates in a competitive and saturated market. The New York metropolitan area is teeming with prestigious health systems and academic medical centers, and Soto's job is to make his voice heard above that noise.
Northwell has also dabbled in entertainment projects in the past, including the Netflix docudrama series “Lenox Hill,” an Oscar-nominated Covid-19 documentary and a mental health documentary with HBO.
Soto said Northwell Studios should help the health system carry out such projects more regularly.
“The intention behind Northwell Studios shouldn’t be, 'Hey, we're going to point out up, it's showbiz and we're going to get our name on the market.' It's really about creating somewhat bit higher infrastructure to do this regularly,” Soto said in an interview with CNBC. “I'm not constructing a soundstage, I'm not constructing a studio, but I actually have hundreds of thousands of square feet and 21 hospitals and 88,000 employees, caregivers, storytellers.”
Soto said there are already five projects in development, although not all of them will necessarily be completed. He said unscripted content has been Northwell's “bread and butter” so far, and there is a comprehensive consent process for patients and staff who opt in.
Northwell Studios is also exploring the possibility of producing scripted films, but patients should not expect to see actors and camera crews walking through the halls.
“We are a health system, we cannot interrupt our operations or patient flow,” Soto said. “We will find the least disruptive and simplest option to capture this content.”
Feel free to send suggestions, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.
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