Big pharma just got another nudge from Washington that Medicare pricing pressure is only moving in one direction. A new batch of well-known drugs from Pfizer (PFE, Financial), Novartis (NVS, Financial), and Eli Lilly (LLY, Financial) has been pulled into the next round of Medicare price negotiations.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services added 15 drugs to its latest negotiation list, including Pfizer's Xeljanz, Novartis' Cosentyx, and Lilly's Trulicity. Other familiar names made the cut too, like AbbVie's Botox, Bristol Myers Squibb's Orencia, and Gilead's Biktarvy. These aren't niche therapies. Between November 2024 and October 2025, about 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries used the drugs on the list, driving roughly $27 billion in prescription spending.
The key thing to remember is timing. Any negotiated prices won't take effect until 2028, so there's no immediate hit to revenue. But the signal is hard to miss. Medicare is zeroing in on large, established drugs that generate steady cash, and that puts long-term pricing pressure on some of pharma's most dependable products.