White House set to unveil Medicare price negotiation savings

The White House is expected to describe the results Thursday of its first Medicare negotiations for the price of 10 prescription drugs, according to three people with knowledge of the planning.

The announcement would come one day before the second anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act , the law giving the federal health insurer for older Americans the authority to haggle with drugmakers over the price of their products. Completion of the first negotiations would represent a milestone for the White House, which has made negotiating lower drug prices a centerpiece of its domestic agenda amid opposition from Republicans and the pharmaceutical industry.

Biden administration officials are expected to disclose the results of the negotiations early on Thursday before the stock market opens because of the impact the news could have on individual companies' stock prices. While it’s unclear how specific the officials will get, the government is expected to highlight the savings that patients can expect starting in 2026.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are slated to tout the details during an event in Maryland later that day, casting it as a key accomplishment of a policy platform focused on easing consumer costs that Democratic presidential nominee Harris has vowed to continue if elected in November.

An HHS spokesperson declined to comment. The White House also declined to comment.

The planning is tentative and could change, said the people, who were granted anonymity to disclose private conversations.

The administration faces a Sept. 1 deadline to disclose the negotiated rates. The private discussions between federal health officials and drugmakers kicked off last October, when the nine manufacturers whose drugs were selected agreed to opt into the process. Those drugs included Bristol Myers Squibb's Eliquis, Johnson & Johnson's Xarelto and Boehringer Ingelheim's Jardiance, among others.

Medicare must explain how it arrived at the prices by March 1 before they kick in Jan. 1, 2026. The agency plans to finalize guidance this fall for the next round of negotiations, and it’s scheduled to publish by Feb. 1 the new list of up to 15 drugs selected. The prices reached during those talks would go into effect in 2027.

Both the White House and the Harris campaign have envisioned the savings promised by the negotiations as playing a significant role in the run-up to November's election. Biden has repeatedly promoted the policy as evidence that his administration "beat Big Pharma" by fulfilling Democrats' decades-long desire to grant Medicare negotiating power. And polling has consistently shown that negotiating drug prices appeals to a majority of voters in both parties.

The Maryland event is likely to be an early example of how officials plan to deploy Biden during his final months in office, as he tries to burnish his legacy and bolster Harris' candidacy.

Harris in her first weeks on the campaign trail has pointed to drug costs as a continuing priority — with Democrats vowing to boost the number of medicines to 50 per year that the government negotiates in the future.

Negotiations with manufacturers ended on Aug. 1. Some executives from companies involved in the talks have indicated in second-quarter earnings calls that they don’t anticipate taking big financial hits from the final prices.

Still, firms are wary of the program’s effects as more drugs become eligible for negotiation in future years. And they’ve argued that they didn’t have much choice but to participate — companies may decline to negotiate under the law, but they would have to either pay a hefty excise tax on their sales or pull their drugs from Medicare and Medicaid.

Most of the companies subject to the talks have sued the administration over the program, arguing it’s unconstitutional. But federal district courts have yet to rule in industry’s favor in the lawsuits waged against the law, denying seven challenges to date.