Welcome to the Week in Review.

Big Pharma’s Price hikes Kick Off 2025

Big Pharma is ringing in the New Year with more than 250 planned price hikes on essential medicines with median increases of 4.5% – well above the 2.7% inflation rate. Pfizer leads the charge with hikes on nearly 60 drugs, including a 3% increase on already expensive breast cancer medication Ibrance which was hiked from $15,982 in 2024 to $16,462 in 2025 – a nearly $500 increase monthly. Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) is raising prices on its costly cancer cell therapies Abecma and Breyanzi by $29,904 and $43,872 respectively, per infusion – treatments that already cost patients nearly half a million dollars. Big Pharma continues to raise prices at will despite the introduction of the Inflation Rebate Program which requires manufacturers to pay Medicare back for price hikes that outpace the rate of inflation, a safeguard that currently only applies to Medicare-covered drugs. These relentless increases highlight the need for reforms to curb unchecked price gouging throughout the entire system, prevent patent abuses that stifle competition, and tackle high launch prices for new therapies coming to market. As more price hikes roll out this month, we’ll continue exposing how Big Pharma puts excessive profits over patients. Stay tuned. — (Reuters, Fierce Pharma, MM+M)

The Next 15 Drugs

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is expected to announce the next 15 drugs selected for Medicare negotiation ahead of the February 1st deadline, offering more patients renewed hope for more affordable medicines beginning in 2027. Among the drugs likely to be included is Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster GLP-1 treatment Ozempic. Medicare spending on this treatment has skyrocketed due to its outrageous monthly list price of $969. Unsurprisingly, 54% of patients using GLP-1 treatments report difficulty affording them. A lower negotiated price for Ozempic could help to more closely align the list price of this expensive treatment with countries like Germany, where it is sold for a fraction of the U.S. price. The results of the first round of negotiations were announced in August 2024 and will lower the list price of 10 widely-used medicines by 39% to 79% in 2026. These lower prices will benefit nine million patients on Medicare who are prescribed these first 10 selected drugs, with millions more patients to benefit in 2027 and beyond.  — (Axios, STAT, KFF, Reuters)

$2,000 Cap On OOP Costs In Effect

Beginning January 1, 2025, patients with Medicare Part D plans will have their annual out-of-pocket drug costs capped at $2,000. This provision, which is part of the historic 2022 prescription drug law, is estimated to save approximately 3.2 million people — who don’t receive a low-income subsidy — thousands of dollars within the first year. For patients with cancer, the cap could mean an average savings of over $7,500 per year, with some saving as much as $19,296. Patients across the country have called the cap “life-changing” and shared that it could allow them to finally retire, after decades in the workforce. — (USA Today, AARP, NBC News, P4AD, The Charlotte Observer, Bangor Daily News)

ICYMI

A new RAND study published in JAMA found that a few ultra-expensive therapies significantly inflate the average cost of developing a new drug. Researchers analyzed 38 FDA-approved drugs and found estimated median research and development costs of $150 million, compared to an average of $369 million. When just two expensive drugs were excluded, the average cost dropped by 26%.

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