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* Following Novartis CEO Vas Narasim-han's presentation during an earnings call in late January, the first question sell-side analysts cued up, not surprisingly, involved drug pricing.
Narasimhan, also the incoming chair of PhRMA, was asked whether he can "see any success in normalizing" the new drug-price law's differing timelines for large and small therapeutics. He responded by laying out his core priorities for the industry to take forward in the U.S.: "One is to correct the distortion of the nine versus 13 small molecule, or NDA versus BLA."
When the law known as the Inflation Reduction Actpassed last August, its drug-price negotiation provision marked a setback forpharma's public affairs agenda. Since then, the measure has become one of the drug industry's universal talking points.
The Act prescribes that, for those biologics selected for price negotiation, "fair prices" will be negotiated 13 years post-approval. For small-molecule drugs, prices will be enacted nine years after approval....