Merck & Co. has sued the U.S. government over Medicare’s newly granted authority to negotiate the prices of certain top-selling medicines, intensifying the pharmaceutical industry’s attack on a law that drugmakers claim will hurt their ability to develop innovative therapies.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Merck asked a federal court to declare the new pricing powers unconstitutional and block the government from enforcing their provisions, which were set out in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The planned program for setting certain drug prices within Medicare is a “sham,” Merck said, and violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.
