New year, new prices: at least 350 drugs in USA to see price increases in January

Drugmakers such as Pfizer, GSK, BMS, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi are planning to raise prices for at least 350 unique drugs in the United States in early January.

With the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the United States’ Medicare health program will be allowed to negotiate drug prices directly beginning in 2026. With rising inflation and supply chain challenges already leading to increased manufacturing costs, drugmakers have already begun increasing prices on more than 1400 in 2022, the greatest number of increases since 2015. 

President of 3 Axis, Antonio Ciaccia, commented that “Drugmakers have to take a harder look at calibrating those launch prices out of the gate so they don’t box themselves into the point where in the future, they can’t price increase their way back into profitability.” Drugmakers have largely confined price increase to 10% or lower and data published by 3 Axis and drug-pricing non-profit 46brooklyn have indicated a price increase of between 5–7% in the last year. The IRA is set to continue a focus on launching drugs at higher prices. 

Several reasons given by pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Sanofi, and BMS include the increase in list price of drugs for CAR-T cell therapies, personalised cell therapies, and autoimmune disease therapies, among others. Other market conditions taken into consideration, as claimed by AstraZeneca spokesman Brendan McEvoy, include clinical value, patient population size, government/payer coverage requirements, patient affordability, and market competition. AstraZeneca is set to raise prices by about 3% on Calquence (a blood cancer treatment), Tagrisso (a non-small cell lung cancer drug), and Fasenra (a drug to treat asthma). 

Source: Exclusive: Drugmakers to raise prices on at least 350 drugs in U.S. in January | Reuters