Drug Price Negotiations Need ‘Nimble’ Approach, Official Says

The Medicare agency may eventually conduct rulemaking to standardize its new process for negotiating the prices of the highest spending drugs, a top official said Monday.

Jonathan Blum, principal deputy administrator and chief operating officer at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said the timeline Congress set in the Inflation Reduction Act (Public Law 117-169) to begin negotiating certain drug prices are “tremendously tight” for the agency. This requires the agency to, at least now, plan out how it will implement this new authority by issuing guidance to industry, rather than going through the process of establishing binding, enforceable ...