Novartis criticises new US drug pricing rules
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Novartis criticises new US drug pricing rules
On Thursday, Novartis reiterated its claim that the US pricing of its Entresto drug was “unconstitutional”. Prices set under the White House’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will limit access to medicine, the Basel firm says.
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The price-setting process is “not objective or transparent” and does not reflect the true value of a drug, Novartis wrote in a press releaseExternal link. For the Basel-based pharmaceutical giant, the new prices set under US President Joe Biden’s IRA will also have “long-lasting and devastating consequences for patients by limiting access to medicines now and in the future”.
Currently, US patients pay an average of $29 (CHF25.24) a month for Entresto, a drug to treat heart failure. The IRA, a wide-ranging program of energy transition and social reform, plans to lower the prices of ten drugs for treating serious illnesses – including Entresto – after January 2026.
+ The background on Novartis’s opposition to the IRA pricing
Under pressure, and despite strong reluctance, several major pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, agreed to take part in negotiations with Medicare, the health insurance scheme for the over-65s in the United States.
“We acceded to a “maximum fair price” for Entresto for 2026 only to avoid other untenable options including catastrophic fines or the removal of all our products from both Medicare and Medicaid,” Novartis said in its press release.
Adapted from French by DeepL/dos
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