“Later this year, the federal government is supposed to start a serious attempt to rein in drug prices: For the first time, Medicare will negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over the prices it’s willing to pay for a short list of drugs. It’s a long-awaited change that is supposed to save the government and patients billions of dollars over time.
But the drug industry is now launching a legal fight aimed at stopping Medicare’s negotiations over prescription drug prices before they begin. The stakes are higher than just a drug price reform: The case could set an important precedent for the government’s authority to try to constrain health care prices.”
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“The Merck lawsuit focuses on the Constitution’s takings (or compensation) clause in the Fifth Amendment, which protects private owners from having property taken without “just compensation” by the government. It also raises First Amendment claims centered on the law’s requirements that drugmakers not disclose information they receive from the government as part of the negotiations. The Chamber of Commerce’s case rests on a constitutional right to due process, arguing that, because the Medicare negotiations are exempt from review by the courts under the IRA, drugmakers are being denied due process.
Taken together, the lawsuits give any judges predisposed to side with private industry over the federal government a few options for a legal foundation upon which to base a decision in pharma’s favor.
A number of legal experts say they are skeptical of these arguments. Merck’s takings clause case turns on defining a patent — an issuance from the government — as private property subject to the just compensation clause, said Robin Feldman, a law professor at UCSF, a difficult assertion. She also said the premise present in both cases — that the federal government as a health care purchaser through Medicare can’t say no to the companies it purchases drugs from and can’t dictate prices as the consumer — is “problematic.”
“It can’t be that the government as a buyer has to pay whatever a seller wants to charge,” she said. “That the government could be forced to spend itself into bankruptcy.”
Regarding the chamber’s due process claim, several legal experts have pointed out that Medicare’s various contracts with health care providers are already often generally exempted from judicial review. It is understood that this is necessary to allow the program to function; the government, as the administrator of the program, needs that authority without each of its decisions being subject to litigation.”
https://www.vox.com/2023/6/16/23760650/medicare-big-pharma-prescription-drug-prices-lawsuit