With the Biden administration’s announcement of the first 10 drugs to be negotiated for Medicare as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), an array of legal challenges from the pharmaceutical industry is potentially the biggest obstacle to implementation.

In court filings, individual drugmakers and the industry’s main lobbying group contend that the negotiations process is unconstitutional in a variety of ways, from violating freedom of speech to unlawful government seizure and excessive fines. They also continue to argue, as they did in the debate over the IRA, that requiring companies to negotiate the prices of drugs with the government will impede the development of new drugs.

On Tuesday, September 12, two legal experts and a health policy expert joined Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, for a 45-minute discussion about the legal issues underpinning these lawsuits and how they intersect with the policy goals of the legislation.

Moderator

• Larry Levitt, Executive Vice President for Health Policy, KFF

Panelists

• Zachary Baron,  Associate Director, Health Policy and the Law Initiative at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
• Tricia Neuman, Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the Program on Medicare Policy, KFF
• Dan Troy, Managing Director, Berkeley Research Group

KFF’s virtual Health Wonk Shop series features in-depth policy discussions with experts that go beyond the news headlines to provide greater insights.