While the New Year's tradition of drug price hikes has held firm for years, pharma companies have decidedly tamped down on the magnitude of cost increases getting rolled out Jan. 1.
All told, drugmakers plan to raise U.S. list prices on some 250 branded drugs beginning this month, Reuters reports, citing data from the healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors. Notable medicines subject to price increases include Pfizer’s COVID-19 drug Paxlovid, Bristol Myers Squibb’s CAR-T therapies Abecma and Breyanzi and a clutch of vaccines from Sanofi, according to the report.
The amount of medicines seeing their price tags tick up in 2025 marks a sizable increase over the 140 branded drugs that underwent price hikes at the start of 2024.
But, while the number of drugs becoming more costly is going up, the median scale of drug price increases has fallen significantly over the past decade, from 9% in 2015 to 4.5% in 2024, Reuters pointed out.
Pfizer's Paxlovid is set to receive a 3% price increase this year, while migraine treatment Nurtec and cancer drugs Adcetris, Ibrance and Xeljanz will see their list prices go up between 3% and 5%, according to the report.
In a statement, a Pfizer spokesperson told the news service that the company largely kept its price adjustments below the overall rate of inflation and stressed that the increases support investments in drug development.
Bristol Myers Squibb, for its part, has raised the price of its cancer cell therapies Abecma and Breyanzi by 6% and 9%, respectively, with a spokesperson telling Reuters that the price for Breyanzi in particular “is reflective of the potentially transformative, individualized treatment in a one-time infusion.”
Elsewhere, certain companies, like New Jersey’s Merck & Co., are decreasing list prices. In Merck’s case, the company has said it’s cutting the costs of its diabetes drugs Januvia and Janumet to help align the medicines’ list prices with their net prices.
As for the biggest price increases of the new year, the 2025 prize goes to the Essetifin unit Leadiant Pharmaceuticals, which is hiking the price of its Hodgkin’s disease drug Matulane by around 15% and slapping a 20% price increase on its Cystaran eye drops for the rare condition cystinosis, Reuters reports.
Drugmakers often use the first of the year to unveil price increases for their medicines. On occasion, additional price hikes are rolled out July 1. Meanwhile, more price hikes are likely to be rolled out over the course of January, which remains the most popular month for the move.
Aside from widespread criticism of steep price hikes in the previous decade, one major effort to rein in drug costs has borne fruit in the form of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which allows Medicare to negotiate costs on certain high-spend drugs, among other pricing provisions.
How that legislation will fare under the incoming Trump administration remains to be seen, however. Overall, President-elect Donald Trump has promoted programs that attempted to corral drug prices for seniors, but he hasn’t endorsed the IRA directly, according to a recent report from the Deloitte U.S. Center for Health Solutions.
3 Axis’ report, which has become a yearly affair, arrives shortly after the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) unveiled its own report on what the cost watchdog claims were “unsupported” drug price increases in 2023. The organization spotlighted 10 drugs that saw their prices grow substantially that year, half of which the ICER claimed “lacked adequate evidence to support any price increase.”
The five medicines that underwent those allegedly unsupported price hikes were Gilead Sciences’ HIV treatment Biktarvy, Johnson & Johnson’s multiple myeloma med Darzalex, Novartis’ Entresto for heart failure, Exelixis’ cancer therapy Cabometyx and Pfizer’s JAK inhibitor Xeljanz, which is approved in rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis and several other conditions. The “unsupported” hikes led to $815 million in incremental added costs for U.S. payers in 2023, the ICER said.