News and Reports | September 29, 2026
P4AD calls on CMS to stand firm against efforts to undermine Medicare’s power to negotiate lower drug prices
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Patients For Affordable Drugs is calling on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to stand firm against efforts to weaken Medicare Drug Price Negotiation after 56 members of Congress signed a letter urging the agency to withdraw a proposed policy designed to address how certain new formulations of existing drugs are treated under the program.
The congressional letter asks CMS to abandon its proposed fixed-dose combination policy for the 2029 negotiation cycle, arguing that the change could discourage pharmaceutical innovation. But the policy is specifically designed to prevent a well-established industry tactic known as product hopping from becoming a way to delay Medicare negotiation. Under current policy, a manufacturer can combine an existing drug with an additional ingredient that enables it to be administered differently so that the resulting tweaked product is treated separately when determining eligibility for negotiation — potentially restarting the clock and delaying lower prices for patients. CMS has proposed closing that loophole by treating certain new formulations together with the original medicine for negotiation purposes.
“Big drug companies have been fighting against Medicare negotiation for years, and after facing a barrage of losses in court, they are searching for other ways to weaken the program,” said Merith Basey, CEO of Patients For Affordable Drugs. “This is the tried-and-tested industry playbook: if they can’t defeat negotiation outright, they’ll try to chip away at it piece by piece. These lawmakers should be standing up for the Americans struggling with high drug prices, not doing the bidding of pharmaceutical industry lobbyists.”
When one in three Americans are struggling to afford their medications, drugmakers should not be able to reset the negotiation clock by tweaking existing treatments and marketing them as new formulations. Without CMS’s proposed change, manufacturers could launch new formulations shortly before a drug becomes eligible for negotiation, potentially delaying lower negotiated prices for patients.
Tecentriq Hybreza illustrates the type of formulation change that could be impacted. In 2024, Genentech received FDA approval for Tecentriq Hybreza, which combines the cancer drug Tecentriq (atezolizumab) with hyaluronidase so the treatment can be injected under the skin rather than administered intravenously. The new formulation was approved for the same adult indications as IV Tecentriq, and the FDA found no notable differences in response rates, progression-free survival, or overall survival between the two formulations. Adding an ingredient to change how an existing medicine is administered should not provide a pathway to restart the clock on Medicare negotiation eligibility.
P4AD strongly supports CMS’s proposal and submitted comments in August, urging the agency to prevent manufacturers from using fixed-combination drugs to delay or evade negotiation. P4AD urged CMS to finalize the policy so the negotiation program “rewards genuine innovation for patients, not industry product-hopping tactics designed to extend monopolies and keep prices high.”
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Patients For Affordable Drugs is the only national patient advocacy organization focused exclusively on policies that lower prescription drug prices. We empower and mobilize patients by amplifying their experiences with high drug prices to hold those in power to account and fight to shape and achieve system-changing policies that make prescription drugs affordable for all people in the United States. P4AD does not accept funding from organizations that profit from the development and distribution of drugs. To learn more, visit PatientsForAffordableDrugs.org.