Uncle Sam Wants You—to Fight High Drug Prices
Help Wanted: Join the government. Fight Big Pharma. Medicare is on a binge to fill some of the most closely watched and consequential new jobs in the federal government: drug-price negotiators.
The U.S. couldn’t haggle over drug prices before. Under last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, federal officials gained the power to square off with drugmakers over how much Medicare pays for a handful of the costliest medicines.
Which is why Uncle Sam has been hunting—through job postings, at least one information session and word-of-mouth—for economists, data scientists and pharmacists to staff the Medicare Drug Rebate and Negotiations Group. At stake are billions of dollars in yearly government spending and pharmaceutical-company revenue—and for some people on Medicare, thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs. To lure applicants, Medicare officials have touted the opportunity to make an impact on the $400 billion U.S.
prescription-drug market and help reduce financial pains for patients burdened by high drug costs. “The IRA is the most significant impact to the pharmaceutical industry since the Affordable Care Act in 2010," a Medicare official said in a careers informational webinar last year. “Negotiation of drug pricing represents the new work for Medicare." The government has hired more than 70 people out of the 96 positions it aims to fill to date, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman said.
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