‘Constitutional arguments fail’: Government lawyers slam suits from Bristol Myers, Janssen over drug price negotiations

While stress­ing that the new gov­ern­ment price ne­go­ti­a­tion pro­gram is strict­ly vol­un­tary, gov­ern­ment lawyers made clear in a New Jer­sey fed­er­al court brief filed last night that both Bris­tol My­ers Squibb and Janssen’s pri­ma­ry le­gal the­o­ry — that the pro­gram rep­re­sents a “phys­i­cal” tak­ing of their prop­er­ty — is un­ten­able un­der the same Supreme Court cas­es that the com­pa­nies in­voke.

The court fil­ing, which again lays out HHS’ de­fense, comes as al­most a dozen phar­ma com­pa­nies have now filed suit over the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act’s drug price ne­go­ti­a­tions in var­i­ous courts across the coun­try. Ear­li­er this month a fed­er­al judge sided with HHS in say­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion time­line can pro­ceed, thus block­ing an ef­fort by the US Cham­ber of Com­merce to stop the ne­go­ti­a­tions be­fore they start.

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