Activists protest against the cost of prescription drugs outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services building in Washington, DC on October 6, 2022.
Anna Moneymaker |
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Good afternoon! The Biden administration's first round of Medicare drug pricing negotiations is nearly complete, with two important deadlines looming.
President Joe Biden's Anti-Inflation Act gave Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices directly with manufacturers for the first time in the federal program's nearly 60-year history. This process is intended to make expensive drugs more affordable for older Americans, but the pharmaceutical industry argues it poses a threat to their revenues, profits and drug innovation.
The government and the manufacturers have been in talks since February, when Medicare submitted its first price offer for each of the 10 selected drugs almost a year ago. These include diabetes drugs from Merck, AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim and blood thinners from Johnson & Johnson And Bristol-Myers Squibbincluding medications.
The negotiation phase officially ends next Thursday. Medicare will publish the final agreed prices for the drugs in early September, but the exact timing is still unclear.
These prices will come into effect in 2026.
Both the government and the pharmaceutical companies have remained largely silent on the progress of the negotiations. However, the companies have stated that they have factored any impact of the price negotiations into their long-term financial forecasts.
“We have received the final numbers from the government. We are not disclosing them at this time,” said Jennifer Taubert, J&J's global chair of innovative medicines, during a conference call last week. “While we do not agree with the [Inflation Reduction Act] and the pricing process, those numbers were incorporated into the forecast we presented last year… that still looks very good for us today.”
Meanwhile, Merck and Novartis And Novo Nordisk Lawsuits challenging the negotiations await district court decisions. In each case, the claims overlap with lawsuits filed by AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb and J&J that have been dismissed in recent months.
After this first round of talks, Medicare can negotiate prices for 15 more drugs for 2027 and another 15 in 2028. Starting in 2029, that number increases to 20 negotiated drugs per year.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the leading candidate to succeed Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee after he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday, would likely seek to expand negotiating space if elected, experts told CNBC.
Feel free to send tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.
Latest technology in healthcare
Abridge, Epic and Mayo Clinic bring generative AI to the nursing workforce
Hands, tablet and doctor with body hologram, overlay and DNA research for medical innovation on app. Medical professional, nurse and mobile touchscreen for tapping on anatomy studies or 3D holographic UX in clinic
Jacob Wackerhausen | Istock |
Nurses are increasingly becoming familiar with artificial intelligence tools.
Epic Systems, Abridge and the Mayo Clinic announced Tuesday that they are working on a new AI-powered solution to automate some of the note-taking that nurses must do.
Like doctors, nurses must handle a mountain of administrative tasks such as paperwork, and this workload contributes to a high risk of burnout throughout the healthcare system. At the Mayo Clinic, for example, which cares for more than 1.3 million patients worldwide each year, documentation is one of the biggest problems for nurses, says Ryannon Frederick, chief nursing officer at the Mayo Clinic.
“Right now, in our current environment, they're spending a lot of time doing work that's necessary but doesn't necessarily use their full skills,” Frederick said in an interview with CNBC.
“We need to find ways to make their jobs easier so that we can use their skills, expertise and intelligence where patients need them most,” Frederick added.
Founded in 2018, Abridge originally developed an AI documentation tool for physicians, which it uses in healthcare systems such as Sutter Health, Yale New Haven Health System, Emory Healthcare, and others. When physicians meet with a patient, they can use Abridge to consensually record their conversations and automatically convert them into clinical notes and summaries.
In March, Abridge CEO Dr. Shiv Rao said the company was saving some doctors up to three hours a day. The logical next step is to adapt the technology and bring those benefits to nurses as well.
“We say there is a public health emergency related to clinician burnout and staff shortages, but nowhere is that public health emergency more acute, in my opinion, than on the nursing side,” Rao said in an interview with CNBC.
Abridge's technology integrates directly with Epic, a healthcare software provider that manages the medical records of more than 305 million people worldwide. Garrett Adams, vice president of research and development at Epic, said the two companies collaborated on the new care tool last year as part of Epic's “Workshop” program. Microsoft's Nuance Communications, which offers a competing AI documentation tool, is also participating in the program.
Frederick said the Mayo Clinic has seen some early prototypes of Abridge's care tool and tested it in a simulation center, but it's still early days. It's important to make sure the solution actually solves their staff's problems, she said, so the Mayo Clinic will continue to test and evaluate it before rolling it out on a larger scale.
Abridge plans to make its nursing documentation tool available to other healthcare organizations in the future.
Feel free to send tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.
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