Pharma companies soften tone on full IRA impact

De­spite the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try’s heavy crit­i­cism of the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act, John­son & John­son, Pfiz­er and Bris­tol My­ers Squibb re­cent­ly down­played the leg­is­la­tion’s over­all im­pact on busi­ness in first-quar­ter earn­ings calls.

All three com­pa­nies voiced ear­ly op­po­si­tion to the IRA, liken­ing Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions to price set­ting and ar­gu­ing that the law is a threat to in­no­va­tion. J&J’s ex­ec­u­tive VP Jen­nifer Taubert re­in­forced that stance in an April call with in­vestors. But she al­so not­ed that J&J’s prod­ucts cur­rent­ly un­der ne­go­ti­a­tion — Xarel­to, Ste­lara and Im­bru­vi­ca — “are not our growth dri­vers for the fu­ture.”

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