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CLL Society Submits a Comment Letter to Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services on Elements of Medicare’s Drug Price Negotiation Program

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The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) are currently providing opportunities for patient organizations like ours to provide them with feedback as they try to determine exactly how they will implement certain aspects of the Drug Price Negotiation Program that was created under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.

The Drug Price Negotiation Program includes several provisions to lower prescription drug costs for people with Medicare and aims to reduce drug spending by the federal government. You can find more details about this particular opportunity for the public to provide comments on the Federal Register’s website.

In our comment letter, we advocate for CMS to consider what the implications could be for the rare disease community depending on how they choose to implement the Drug Price Negotiation Program. There are already reports of drug manufacturers withdrawing their previously planned research and development efforts for new uses of their existing drugs due to some of the newly proposed rules. CLL Society voiced concern that if certain aspects of the program are implemented as proposed, they will have a chilling effect on future drug development (innovation) for rare diseases like CLL / SLL.

Download the comment letter here.