On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled a new list of 15 drugs to be subject to price negotiations under the Medicare health program.

The list, released this morning by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), includes the two blockbuster diabetes treatments Ozempic and Wegovy developed by Novo Nordisk.

It also includes Janumet, another anti-diabetic produced by Merck, as well as the anti-cancer drugs Ibrance (Pfizer) and Calquence (AstraZeneca).

In a press release, the HHS specifies that negotiations on the prices of these 15 drugs are due to start in 2025, with a view to new prices taking effect by 2027.

In all, some 5.3 million patients were prescribed these treatments between November 2023 and October 2024, the HHS says, at a total cost to Medicare of $41 billion.

The Biden administration argues that it has already succeeded in obtaining rebates of between 38% and 79% on the ten drugs on an initial list unveiled in August 2023, equivalent to annual savings of around six billion dollars.

Under the terms of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), 15 new drugs will be designated in the third phase of negotiations, then up to 20 molecules in each round of the talks to come.

Following these announcements, the healthcare sector - always highly vulnerable to the debate on drug prices - was the worst performer on the S&P 500 index on Wall Street on Friday, with a stable score at the end of the morning.

With a decline of over 7% in three months, its sector index suffered the steepest fall over the period, behind raw materials (-9.2%).

Eli Lilly shares in particular lost 2.4%, leading to losses of over 7% this week. On the Dow, Merck (-0.9%) and Johnson & Johnson (-0.1%) were among the index's biggest decliners.

Copyright (c) 2025 CercleFinance.com. All rights reserved.