The Inflation Reduction Act , which Democrats passed last August, for the first time allows the government's Medicare health plan for people age 65 and over to negotiate the prices it is willing to pay for certain medications., whose members gathered in the thousands this week in San Francisco for the annual JP Morgan Healthcare conference, opposed the legislation and has begun implementing strategies to mitigate its impact.
The law sets a nine-year exemption period for "small-molecule" drugs, which are mainly pills, while "large molecule" biologics, generally injections or infusions, are protected from negotiation for 13 years. Lilly has already dropped a small-molecule blood cancer drug from its pipeline because "we just couldn't make the math work," Ricks said.
Most medicines on the market today are small molecules, which can be taken by mouth, absorbed into the bloodstream and easily penetrate cell membranes. Common examples include aspirin, statins for high cholesterol and blood pressure drugs. But the industry has also come up with innovative pills, which patients often prefer. Lilly and other drugmakers, for instance, are developing oral drugs for a diabetes and obesity- related target that is currently reached only by injected drugs.When pills lose patent protection, generic copies usually enter the market at price discounts of up to 90%, while the competing "biosimilar" versions of large molecule drugs is much less robust and the discounts much lower.
..profit over people BigPharma
Pharma=Greed
Because, of course.
More gov't overregulation.