(Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden will announce on Thursday that dozens of pharmaceutical companies will be required to pay rebates to Medicare for “outrageous” price hikes on prescription drugs, the White House said.
For the last quarter of 2023, prices of 48 Medicare Part B drugs rose faster than inflation, according to the White House, which also said some big pharmaceutical companies raised prices of certain medications every quarter through the year.
These drugs may be subject to inflation rebates in the first quarter of 2024 as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Biden, a Democrat, signed last year.
The IRA aims to save $25 billion annually by 2031 by requiring drugmakers to negotiate the prices of selected expensive drugs with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, which oversees Medicare.
(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru, editing by Christina Fincher and Arun Koyyur)
