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The White House unveiled the fruits of months of negotiations between the government and pharmaceutical companies: new, lower Medicare prices for 10 blockbuster drugs.
The discounts range from 79% for diabetes drug Januvia to 38% for blood cancer drug Imbruvica.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra played up the savings Wednesday evening.
In a press call ahead of the announcement, Becerra said if the negotiated prices were in effect in 2023, Medicare would have saved $6 billion and beneficiaries would have saved $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs, such as copays at the pharmacy counter.
“I had the privilege to work closely with our HHS team and oversee the negotiations,” which took nearly a year, Becerra said. “The negotiations were comprehensive. They were intense. It took both sides to reach a good deal.”
The program selected the first 10 medicines for negotiation last year based on several conditions laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act, which ended Medicare’s 20-year ban on negotiating drug prices. The drugs included blockbuster blood thinners, like Eliquis and Xarelto, as well as drugs for arthritis...