The De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices (HHS) on Wednes­day un­veiled the first set of 27 Part B pre­scrip­tion drugs, in­clud­ing five from Pfiz­er, that will be sub­ject to Medicare in­fla­tion re­bates be­cause their prices rose faster than the rate of in­fla­tion.

Se­niors re­ceiv­ing the physi­cian-ad­min­is­tered drugs be­gin­ning in April will have low­er coin­sur­ance for these drugs (list­ed be­low) and HHS said they may see their out-of-pock­et costs for these drugs de­crease by as much as $390 per av­er­age dose.

“In ad­di­tion to mak­ing drug com­pa­nies pay Medicare back for in­creas­ing their prices faster than in­fla­tion, this pro­vi­sion of the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act dis­cour­ages oth­er com­pa­nies from do­ing the same, with the goal of rein­ing in ex­ces­sive drug price hikes year-over-year,” the White House and CMS said in a fact sheet re­leased this morn­ing (in ad­di­tion to the ini­tial guid­ance de­tail­ing the re­quire­ments and pro­ce­dures for the Medicare Pre­scrip­tion Drug In­fla­tion Re­bate Pro­gram here).

Mov­ing for­ward, CMS said, ben­e­fi­cia­ry coin­sur­ance will be based on the in­fla­tion-ad­just­ed pay­ment amount for the fol­low­ing drugs:

Usu­al sus­pects like Ab­b­Vie’s Hu­mi­ra will be sub­ject to biosim­i­lar com­pe­ti­tion be­gin­ning this year so the price in­creas­es will like­ly come down. But for oth­er drugs with­out com­peti­tors, the price in­creas­es con­tin­ue apace, such as with Gilead sub­sidiary Kite Phar­ma’s CAR-T can­cer ther­a­py Yescar­ta.

The five Pfiz­er drugs in­clude old­er drugs like the blood thin­ner Frag­min (dal­teparin), which first won FDA ap­proval in 1994; Atgam, which is for al­lo­graft re­jec­tion in re­nal trans­plant pa­tients; and the chemo Nipent (pen­to­statin), as well as an­tibac­te­r­i­al drugs, Bi­cillin L-A and Bi­cillin C-R.

But CMS doesn’t in­tend to send the first in­voic­es to drug com­pa­nies for the 2023 and 2024 re­bates un­til 2025.

In ad­di­tion to this list, the White House al­so put out a re­port Wednes­day ex­plain­ing how se­niors will see more than $230 mil­lion in sav­ings this year when the more than 3.4 mil­lion peo­ple with Medicare be­gin to pay no out-of-pock­et costs for rec­om­mend­ed vac­cines.

“The re­port al­so shows that in some cas­es, some peo­ple paid near­ly $200 for the shin­gles vac­cine by it­self.  Again, not any­more,” said HHS Sec­re­tary Xavier Be­cer­ra on yes­ter­day af­ter­noon’s press call.

Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries in the Dako­tas, Mon­tana and Wyoming will see the biggest sav­ings from the IRA-re­lat­ed change re­lat­ed to no OOP costs for rec­om­mend­ed vac­cines, HHS said.

Ed­i­tor’s note: Ar­ti­cle up­dat­ed with a quote from HHS Sec­re­tary Be­cer­ra and links to the HHS and CMS re­ports and doc­u­ments.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

The FDA today approved Emergent BioSolutions’ Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter sales. The nod was expected and comes on the heels of a unanimous 19-0 advisory committee vote in favor of approval last month.

The move to OTC means the opioid overdose reversal agent will now be available on grocery, convenience and gas stations shelves, as well as potentially for purchase online.