Which specific drugs were negotiated under the Inflation Reduction Act and how much will Medicare beneficiaries save on each?
Executive summary
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) empowered Medicare to negotiate prices for high‑cost, single‑source drugs, producing an initial set of negotiated prices that CMS says will reduce Medicare beneficiaries’ out‑of‑pocket spending by about $1.5 billion in 2026; however, the public reporting provided in the supplied documents does not include a complete per‑drug breakdown of beneficiary savings in these sources [1] [2] [3]. One drug—Entresto—is explicitly cited in the reporting as part of the first 10 selected for negotiation, but the exact per‑drug dollar savings to beneficiaries is not published in the excerpts provided here [2].
1. What the law does and the headline savings
The IRA created a new Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program that targets the highest‑spend, single‑source Part D drugs and requires CMS to set a Maximum Fair Price (MFP) that plans and Medicare would pay, with CMS projecting that the initial negotiated prices would yield roughly $1.5 billion in annual out‑of‑pocket savings for Medicare enrollees when the first set takes effect in 2026 [1] [2] [4]. Independent estimates and government analyses suggest larger programmatic effects—CBO expects average reductions in net prices for selected drugs of about 50%—but those are averages and do not translate directly into per‑drug beneficiary savings without CMS’s published MFPs and benefit‑design modeling [5].
2. Which specific drugs were selected (and what the sources show about names)
CMS and advocacy groups report that 10 drugs were selected for the initial 2026 negotiation cycle; public summaries and press releases name Entresto among them, and other reporting groups reference that the selection covers drugs for diabetes, heart failure, autoimmune disease and blood cancers, but the provided snippets do not enumerate all ten drug names in full [2] [3] [4]. CMS has committed to publishing the agreed‑upon negotiated prices and explanations by March 2025 and to making details available for each selected drug, but within the supplied materials the full per‑drug MFPs or explicit per‑drug beneficiary savings figures are not shown [1].
3. What the reporting says about per‑drug savings (and the reporting gap)
Aggregated beneficiary savings are supplied—CMS and several watchdogs estimate roughly $1.5 billion in out‑of‑pocket reductions for 2026 beneficiaries from the first batch of negotiated prices—but the supplied documents do not provide a table that translates each drug’s negotiated price into a precise out‑of‑pocket dollar reduction for typical beneficiaries under specific Part D plans [1] [2] [3]. ASPE’s broader modeling suggests that one in three enrollees could save about $400 in out‑of‑pocket costs from the IRA’s drug provisions overall, a useful population‑level sense but not a per‑drug accounting [6]. Thus, while program averages and total beneficiary impacts are reported, the specific per‑drug beneficiary savings cannot be asserted from the materials provided here.
4. How analysts and stakeholders interpret the numbers
Government and independent analysts frame the negotiation program as capable of deep price cuts—CBO’s simulation points to roughly 50% average net price reductions for selected drugs—and CMS projects substantial taxpayer and beneficiary savings when aggregated [5] [1]. Industry and policy critics, represented in the supplied analysis, warn that headline savings do not capture distributional effects (for example, whether plan formularies or copayment tiers blunt beneficiary savings) and argue that the process raises questions about impacts on innovation and on manufacturers’ responses [7] [5]. CMS has signaled it will monitor plan practices that could undermine beneficiary access to negotiated prices and will publish explanatory materials accompanying the MFPs [1].
5. Bottom line and reporting limits
The concrete, verifiable findings in the supplied sources are that the IRA’s negotiation program selected 10 drugs for the initial 2026 cycle (with Entresto named in reporting), CMS projects about $1.5 billion in beneficiary out‑of‑pocket savings from that first set, and federal analyses forecast large average price reductions for selected drugs—yet the provided materials do not include a per‑drug list of negotiated prices matched to dollar‑amount beneficiary savings, so a precise per‑drug beneficiary‑savings table cannot be compiled from these sources alone [2] [1] [5] [6]. For a definitive per‑drug accounting, CMS’s published MFPs and the agency’s beneficiary‑impact modeling for each drug—documents referenced by CMS as forthcoming or public—must be consulted directly [1].