HHS says Mer­ck­'s in­ter­pre­ta­tions of IRA 'doom' its le­gal chal­lenge

HHS ar­gued in court fil­ings on Mon­day that Mer­ck’s mis­un­der­stand­ings of the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act “doom” the com­pa­ny’s le­gal chal­lenge.

Mer­ck filed suit against the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in June, fol­lowed by sev­er­al oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers who have ar­gued that the IRA’s Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tion pro­vi­sions vi­o­late the Con­sti­tu­tion by com­pelling the com­pa­nies’ speech, im­pos­ing ex­ces­sive fines, tak­ing pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out due process and fair com­pen­sa­tion, and more. The law­suits, which con­tain sim­i­lar ar­gu­ments, have been filed in a va­ri­ety of dis­tricts in what some le­gal ex­perts have rec­og­nized as a po­ten­tial strat­e­gy to ex­pe­dite the cas­es to the Supreme Court.

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