Biden touts Medicare negotiating drug prices: ‘Today is the start of a new deal for patients’

President Joe Biden on Tuesday touted Medicare announcing the list of drugs for which it will begin to negotiate prices, calling it a win for patients.

The president made his remarks at the White House after the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would begin the process of negotiating the prices of ten drugs. The negotiations will take place throughout 2023 and 2024 and the new drug prices will take effect in 2026.

“Today is the start of a new deal for patients,” he said. “Big pharma doesn't just have to get a blank check at your expense and expense the American people.”

The negotiation process is a cornerstone of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Mr Biden signed in August of last year after a series of drawn-out negotiations among Democratic senators, most notably Sen Joe Manchin (W-WV). Mr Biden said he wished it had a better name to describe what it does.

“We did lower inflation but there many other things in that legislation,” he said. Mr Biden noted how the United States pays more for prescription drugs than any other major economy in the world. He also noted how for many years, advocates had pushed to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

“For years, big Pharma blocked this,” he said. “They kept prescription drug prices high to increase their profits, to extend patents on existing drugs to suppress fair competition instead of innovate.”

Mr Biden said that the law would not only put more money back in the pockets of patients but that it would also reduce the federal deficit. He also touted how under the law, Medicare patients only have to pay $35 for insulin.

“When we act change happens,” he said. The first round of drugs will include medicine that treats diabetes, heart failure and kidney diseases.

“Look, if your company if you compare the total global drug price globally, the United States is clearly an outlier,” he said, noting how some patients pay almost three times as much for drugs to treat blood clots in the United States than patients in Canada pay for the same medicine.

In addition to the first round of negotiations, Medicare will select ten more drugs to be up for price negotiation. Mr Biden noted how the pharmaceutical companies spent $400m to stop the Inflation Reduction Act last year and how the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, spent $400m in lobbying to stop it and are now suing.

Indeed, on Tuesday, the organisation’s president Stephen Ubl denounced what it called “government price setting.”

“Today’s announcement is the result of a rushed process focused on short-term political gain rather than what is best for patients,” he said in a statement.

“Giving a single government agency the power to arbitrarily set the price of medicines with little accountability, oversight or input from patients and their doctors will have significant negative consequences long after this administration is gone.”

But Mr Biden pushed back and said it would benefit patients.

“But we're going to see this through,” he said. “We're going to keep standing up to big pharma and we're not gonna back down.”