I am pretty sure January is actually the whole first half of the year. Bears and hibernation might have the right idea.

Old Hat Already: I hit send last week and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the list of 2027 Medicare negotiated drugs. Overall it felt like just another announcement with little fanfare. Partly because everything feels a bit like a question mark with the new Administration, but it is the law and so we assume full steam ahead until told otherwise.

If you’re on the list, you were already planning for it and likely hired a law firm or consultants and are gathering all your information that is due next month. But non-negotiated products should probably take and see if competitors are on there or products that, in some way, tell a story that could serve as a proxy to your product. Learning lessons before you need them paves an easier future. Ask me how I know.

Hoping I’m Wrong. This week the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) announced that they were ditching their unsupported price increase (UPI) report and instead creating a annual launch price and access report. I did not like the UPI report methodology but I’m not sure if this report will be a huge improvement. Time, and methodology, will tell but launch price is just one nugget. We have inflationary penalties now for price increases so launch prices are going to be higher and we also have a system where high prices are rewarded by stakeholders in the distribution channel and where net prices are really hard to get at. I wish ICER well – really – but I feel like value and ultimately, patient affordability, are more important.

Status Updates: Last week, MedPAC reviewed the Part D status report chapter and the presentation, as usual, is a nice overview of where Part D is at for 2025. Key question during the discussion (and my mind) is what do we do about the downward spiral happening in the standalone prescription drug plan (PDP) market. MedPAC will be diving into this over the coming months but I don’t think there are any easy answers except to say that it is highly unlikely that a last minute demonstration will be announced in August to save the market.

And I wouldn’t usually recommend reading MedPAC transcripts for fun but I did enjoy page 156 where Dr. Brian Miller from John Hopkins questions whether MedPAC staff views the Inflation Reduction Act as a negotiation because he doesn’t.