WASHINGTON — Medicare on Tuesday announced it will negotiate prices for 10 drugs, including major blood thinners and diabetes medications, in the first round of its negotiation program created in Democrats’ drug pricing reform law.
The drugs include Bristol Myers Squibb’s blood thinner Eliquis, Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly’s diabetes drug Jardiance, Johnson & Johnson’s blood thinner Xarelto, Merck’s diabetes drug Januvia, AstraZeneca’s diabetes drug Farxiga, Novartis’ heart failure treatment Entresto, Amgen’s rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel, Johnson & Johnson and AbbVie’s blood cancer treatment Imbruvica, J&J’s anti-inflammatory medicine Stelara, and Novo Nordisk insulins that go by names including Fiasp and NovoLog.
The new prices will be announced on Sept. 1, 2024, and will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026. The drugs were chosen from a list of 50 treatments that cost Medicare’s pharmacy drug benefit the most money. The selected medicines cost Medicare more than $50 billion and made up 20% of the Medicare program’s pharmacy drug costs over a one-year period, the Department of Health and Human Services said. (Read more here about the winners and losers of the selection.)
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