Older Americans to pay less for some drug treatments as drugmakers penalized for big price jumps

Hundreds of thousands of older Americans could pay less for some of their outpatient drug treatments beginning early next year, the Biden administration announced Thursday.

The White House unveiled a list of 48 drugs — from chemotherapy treatments to growth hormones used to treat endocrine disorders — whose prices increased faster than the rate of inflation this year. Under a new law, drugmakers will have to pay rebates to the federal government because of those price increases. The money will be used to lower the price Medicare enrollees pay on the drugs early next year.

“For years, there’s been no check on how high or how fast big pharma can raise drug prices,” President Joe Biden said Thursday, speaking in a lab at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. “Let’s call this for what it is – it simply is a rip off. They’re ripping off Medicare. They’re ripping off the American people. We’re now fighting back.”