The lawsuit was filed June 14 by Merck, Eli Lilly, Amgen and an advertising trade association.
The drugmakers claim HHS doesn’t have the legal power to force drugmakers to include prices in their ads and argue that the move will mislead patients.
“Not only does the rule raise serious freedom of speech concerns, it mandates an approach that fails to account for differences among insurance, treatments, and patients themselves, by requiring disclosure of list price,” an Amgen representative told Bloomberg.
The lawsuit could stall part of the Trump administration’s blueprint to lower drug prices with regulation. The ad regulation, finalized on May 8, is supposed to take effect in July.
“If the drug companies are embarrassed by their prices or afraid that the prices will scare patients away, they should lower them,” Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman for HHS, told Bloomberg when asked for a statement about the lawsuit.
Read the full report here.
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