Medicare to Negotiate Lower Prices for Weight-Loss Drugs

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that thanks to the negotiations, Medicare’s prices for semaglutide products “will fall substantially beginning in 2027.”

That would also open the door to lower prices for competing obesity drugs like Eli Lilly’s Zepbound. Pharmacy benefit managers, which negotiate drug prices, would have more leverage to demand lower prices closer to what the government pays for semaglutide. If the government were to expand coverage of obesity drugs, the amount Medicare would spend on each patient taking one of them would fall by about a third in 2027, the C.B.O. projected.

That would slow the growth of the government’s spending on obesity drugs even as more people on Medicare started using them.

New prices for the 10 drugs in the first round of price negotiations were announced last summer. Those prices will go into effect next year.

Drugmakers were relieved that those cuts were not deeper.

Drugs Selected for Medicare’s Second Round of Price Negotiations

Prices will go into effect in 2027.

1. Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy, for diabetes and obesity

2. Trelegy Ellipta, for lung conditions

3. Xtandi, for prostate cancer

4. Pomalyst, for blood cancer

5. Ibrance, for breast cancer

6. Ofev, for lung conditions

7. Linzess, for gastrointestinal conditions

8. Calquence, for blood cancers

9. Austedo and Austedo XR, for neurological diseases

10. Breo Ellipta, for lung conditions

11. Tradjenta, for diabetes

12. Xifaxan, for liver and gastrointestinal problems

13. Vraylar, for depression

14. Janumet and Janumet XR, for diabetes

15. Otezla, for inflammatory conditions