If they chose not to participate, wouldn’t that mean they would not be covered by Medicare at all?
If they won’t negotiate on the price, then a 95% tax on all sales of that drug will be imposed the next year. So they’ve got a lot of incentive to negotiate.
See https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-2022/medicare-drug-price-negotiations.html
I’m guessing they made the penalty a tax, because this was a part of the inflation reduction act passed by democrats, and to evade the filibuster with the reconciliation rules the law has to strictly involve budgets and taxes.
Crazy how the US government throwing its weight around at corporations works really well. Almost like if they did it as much as European countries do we’d have equivalent QOL and have something to show for being the richest country on Earth.
