What’s next for Medicare drug price negotiations | Wilnesh News

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Good morning! Fierce legal battle is over Negotiating health insurance drug prices The situation is heating up — and so far, it looks good for the Biden administration.

So, what is this fight about in the first place?it revolves around a Key terms President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act gives Medicare the power to negotiate prices for expensive prescription drugs. The negotiations are aimed at making the drugs more affordable for seniors and could reduce profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

The Biden administration faces a series of lawsuits The drugmaker’s drug was selected for the first round of negotiations. The final negotiated prices for the first 10 drugs will take effect in 2026.

The lawsuits claim price negotiations are unconstitutional and must be dismissed.

Some pharmaceutical companies have made it clear that the negotiations will force them to sell drugs at deep discounts to market prices. They claim it violates due process under the Fifth Amendment, which requires the government to pay reasonable compensation for public use of private property.

But the government has scored some early victories in some cases.

• AstraZeneca: Earlier this month, a federal judge in Delaware reject Drug maker lawsuits. The judge said AstraZeneca’s due process claim “failed as a matter of law,” noting that the company had no right to sell its drug to the government “at any price other than what the government is willing to pay.”
• PhRMA (the pharmaceutical industry’s largest lobbying group) and two other organizations: Last month a federal judge in Texas fired The lawsuit says the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the claims.
• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the largest lobbying groups in the United States: A federal judge in Ohio issued a partial ruling in the case in September. deny The chamber is seeking a preliminary injunction aimed at blocking price negotiations until October 1. The judge said the group had not shown a “high probability” of success in proving that the scheme violated due process.

“All the momentum right now is clearly on the side of the government and not on the side of some of the other manufacturers,” Theresa CarnegieA member of Mintz Levin told CNBC.

Several cases remain pending, including legal challenges from high-profile figures such as Merck and Johnson & Johnson. Carnegie noted that decisions in these cases could be made by the end of the year.

But she said the rulings we’ve seen so far “make sense” for those remaining legal challenges.

“Any judge in any other case is going to take into account the previous decision, and that necessarily affects their potential decision, how they view it, and they have to find a novel theory or argue against it,” Carnegie said. For example, she noted that courts have rejected the pharmaceutical industry’s due process claims in two cases.

Drugmakers say they aim to escalate legal fight over Medicare drug price negotiations Supreme Court.

Here’s why: The companies are spreading the litigation out to federal courts across the United States. Several legal experts said the industry hopes to get conflicting rulings from federal appeals courts so the issue can be quickly brought to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Carnegie said it seemed “increasingly unlikely” that the legal battle would reach the Supreme Court.

With three rulings in favor of the Biden administration, the pharmaceutical industry will need to see the courts take different positions in the coming months to establish a “circuit split” that the Supreme Court may agree to review.

Still, Carnegie said, “given the ease with which some of these decisions were made and how the courts reached them, these issues do not appear to be creating uncertainty or dividing circuits.”

So, what happens next? Carnegie said drugmakers appear to realize their lawsuits may not go the way they want, so they can shift the focus of their lawsuits to how the government implements the program.

She said drugmakers and industry associations would look for “any opportunity to object to the way the program works.”

Please feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

I went to HIMSS for the first time last year, which was held in Chicago. Artificial intelligence was completely steal the show. Everyone can talk about generative artificial intelligence and its potential, especially since the conference was held just a few months after OpenAI’s ChatGPT entered the public domain.

I predict that artificial intelligence will once again be the dominant theme this year, albeit with slightly different capabilities. Last year, with companies like Epic Systems, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google announcing early AI applications and partnerships, there was a lot of discussion about what the technology could one day achieve.

This year, I think the focus will be on what AI has already achieved in the field. As the market for healthcare-specific AI solutions becomes increasingly saturated, tech companies will need to prove their tools are efficient, effective and, of course, safe if they want to remain competitive. Games start!

There have been several noteworthy announcements. Salesforce Revealed New artificial intelligence solutions Leading HIMSS can help reduce clinicians’ administrative workload by unifying disparate data and automating some manual tasks. Microsoft on Monday announced the creation of a “trustworthy and accountable artificial intelligence network” designed to improve the quality and trustworthiness of healthcare technology. freed.Microsoft’s announcement comes just a week after the launch of the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Health Appoint its CEO and boards, so efforts to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in health are heating up.

In addition to the conference, I also learned that Orlando is a major health tech hub in its own right. On Monday, I toured three facilities in the city’s Lake Nona area. Here, among gleaming new buildings and palm trees, health systems are experimenting with and developing state-of-the-art technology before rolling it out more widely. More details will be announced soon.

It’s going to be a busy week, and this New York reporter might even see some sunshine between meetings. What more could I ask for?

Please feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.