Fifth Circuit Wrestles Again With US Drug Price Negotiation Plan

The Fifth Circuit appeared skeptical Tuesday of the operations of the Biden-era Medicare drug pricing program, wrestling with how the plan negotiates drug prices or allows industry disputes.

“Basically it’s a take it or leave it kind of thing, and there’s no review of any of this on the back end,” Judge Cory Wilson of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services program.

“How do we know that the agency has respected Congress’s law?” Wilson said.

The court grilled the CMS during oral argument as the Pharmaceutical Research and ...