Drug­mak­ers gear up for joint IRA ar­gu­ments as PhRMA ap­peals Texas ver­dict

Le­gal ex­perts an­tic­i­pate a “full range” of con­sti­tu­tion­al and statu­to­ry ar­gu­ments from drug­mak­ers that are joint­ly set to have their cas­es heard against the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act.

De­spite ob­jec­tions from the gov­ern­ment, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, John­son & John­son, No­var­tis and No­vo Nordisk will have their cas­es heard to­geth­er on Thurs­day in New Jer­sey fed­er­al court.

Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Law, San Fran­cis­co pro­fes­sor Robin Feld­man has spec­u­lat­ed that hav­ing the cas­es heard to­geth­er could be a tac­tic to throw at­tack af­ter at­tack at the IRA in the hopes that some­thing will ap­peal to the judge. But on Wednes­day, ex­perts said the drug­mak­ers will like­ly fo­cus on one ar­gu­ment in par­tic­u­lar: that Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions vi­o­late the Fifth Amend­ment’s tak­ings clause.

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