Pharmaceutical industry lobby group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and two other groups said on Wednesday that they were suing the US government to prevent the implementation of a policy that provides Medicare the authority to negotiate medication costs.
PhRMA, the National Infusion Center Association, and the Global Colon Cancer Association—which includes PhRMA and certain drug corporations as members—said the medication price negotiation program was illegal in a lawsuit they filed in a federal court in Texas.
Pharmaceutical Industry Opposes Joe Biden’s Drug Price
Following separate legal challenges by Merck & Co, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the powerful business organization the US Chamber of Commerce, this is the fourth lawsuit filed in an effort to overturn the statute, which is a component of President Joe Biden’s hallmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The pharmaceutical industry asserts that bargaining product prices with the government health plan for Americans 65 and older will reduce earnings and force companies to postpone the development of ground-breaking new therapies.
More than any other nation, Americans pay more for prescription drugs. Through price negotiations for the pharmaceuticals that are most expensive to Medicare, the Joe Biden administration’s drug pricing reform hopes to save $25 billion annually by 2031.
In the most recent litigation, it is claimed that the unrestricted power granted by Congress to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violates the separation of powers doctrine of the United States.
Read more: Bristol Myers Challenges US Government’s Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Plan
James Stansel, chief counsel for the PhRMA, claimed during a press conference that Congress employed a number of unconstitutional workarounds to grant the executive branch the unrestricted authority to replace Medicare’s market-based rates with an entirely new set of costs at its own discretion.
The lawsuit claims that the pricing negotiation scheme violates the Fifth Amendment and Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution by excluding the public from important decisions, which protects against disproportionate fines.
Read more: Medicare Price Negotiations: Drugmakers Fight Back, What You Need To Know