Drugmakers are prioritizing complex biotech medicines over treatments that can be given as pills because recent U.S. legislation gives biologics a longer runway before becoming subject to government price limits, top industry executives said this week.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Democrats passed last August, for the first time allows the government's Medicare health plan for people age 65 and over to negotiate the prices it is willing to pay for certain medications.
The pharmaceutical industry, whose members gathered in the thousands this week in San Francisco for the annual JP Morgan Healthcare conference, opposed the legislation and has begun implementing strategies to mitigate its impact.
Such a shift in focus could result in the availability of far fewer cheap, generic pills in the long run.
All other developed nations negotiate drug prices, making the United States the most lucrative market for the industry. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the IRA's drug pricing provisions will reduce the federal deficit by $237 billion over the next decade.
Medicare will select the first 10 drugs for the program this year. The number of medications subject to price negotiation will increase over time, but newer drugs are not included.
The law sets a nine-year exemption period for "small-molecule" drugs, which are mainly pills, while "large molecule" biologics, generally injections or infusions, are protected from negotiation for 13 years.
"The difference between a nine- and 13-year product line is about 50 or 60% of the value," Eli Lilly Chief Executive Officer Dave Ricks said in an interview. "In 10 years, we'll have far fewer small molecules being developed than we do today."
He questioned the benefit of "rules that really just disincentivize investment in what ends up being convenient drugs, drugs for tough conditions like cancer and drugs that get really cheap when they go generic."
https://www.yahoo.com/now/drug-companies-favor-biotech-meds-121032505.html
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.