The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services confirmed on March 13, 2026, that the manufacturers of all 15 drugs picked for the next round of Medicare price negotiations had agreed to take part, locking in a process that now has a hard federal deadline. By law, CMS has to publish the negotiated price for each of those drugs no later than November 30, 2026. For the roughly 1.8 million people with Medicare who have used one of these medications in the past year, that date determines what a monthly prescription will cost starting in 2028 — but not yet what it will cost now.
Fifteen drugs, one January announcement
CMS made the underlying selection back on January 27, 2026, naming the third cycle’s drug list: Anoro Ellipta, Biktarvy, Botox and Botox Cosmetic, Cimzia, Cosentyx, Entyvio, Erleada, Kisqali, Lenvima, Orencia, Rexulti, Trulicity, Verzenio, Xeljanz and Xeljanz XR, and Xolair, treating conditions that range from HIV and diabetes to psoriatic arthritis and several cancers. A sixteenth drug, Tradjenta, was chosen for renegotiation of a price CMS already set in an earlier cycle.
CMS confirmed in that same announcement that the 15 newly selected drugs accounted for about $27 billion in combined Medicare Part B and Part D spending between November 2024 and October 2025, according to the CMS selected-drug-list fact sheet. That spending total is a snapshot of what Medicare and its enrollees currently pay across the program combined — it isn’t a savings figure, since no price has been negotiated yet. CMS also released a companion list of the 50 top negotiation-eligible drugs ranked by combined Part B and Part D expenditures, and the 15 selected for this cycle are, by the agency’s account, the highest-spending drugs on that longer list.
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The first cycle to reach Part B drugs
Every drug negotiated in the program’s first two cycles came from Medicare Part D, the pharmacy benefit people fill at a retail counter. This is the first cycle to also reach Medicare Part B, which covers drugs a doctor administers directly, usually by injection or infusion in a clinic or office. Four of the 15 selected drugs — Botox and Botox Cosmetic, Cimzia, Orencia, and Entyvio — draw primarily on Part B volume, per the CMS fact sheet. That distinction matters for cost-sharing: Part B drugs are typically billed under Medicare’s 20% coinsurance structure rather than a Part D plan’s copay tiers, so a negotiated price there changes what beneficiaries owe at the point of an infusion appointment, not just at the pharmacy counter.
Why November 30 isn’t CMS’s choice
The November 30 date isn’t a CMS-set target; it’s written into federal law. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1320f-4, the statute created by the Inflation Reduction Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services “shall publish the maximum fair price” for each selected drug “not later than November 30 of the year that is 2 years prior to” the year the price takes effect. Because these 15 drugs’ negotiated prices are scheduled to take effect January 1, 2028, the publication deadline lands exactly two years earlier: November 30, 2026. CMS’s own manufacturer-participation fact sheet lays out the steps between now and then: CMS was required to send each participating company an initial price offer with a written justification no later than June 1, 2026, each company had 30 days to accept or counter, and the negotiation period itself runs through November 1, 2026 — with up to two additional negotiation meetings possible over summer and fall before that cutoff. Along the way, CMS also committed to hosting 16 patient-focused roundtable events, one for each of the 15 selected drugs plus the renegotiated one, open to patients, caregivers, and patient advocacy groups, plus separate clinician-focused town halls on the same drugs — both meant to feed real-world evidence about each drug’s benefits and alternatives into the price CMS eventually offers.
What’s confirmed now, and what still isn’t
What’s settled as of today is the list of drugs, the manufacturers’ agreement to negotiate, and the legal deadline that forces a public number by the end of November. What isn’t settled is the number itself. CMS has not published a maximum fair price for any of the 15 drugs, and the agency’s own selected-drugs-and-negotiated-prices page still lists only the prices finalized in the program’s first two cycles, not this one. Those earlier rounds offer a rough sense of scale: CMS reached agreement with manufacturers on all 15 drugs selected in the second cycle, with those prices taking effect January 1, 2027, and CMS has estimated that if those prices had applied in 2024, net Medicare spending on that group of drugs would have run about 36% lower. Nothing in that estimate applies to the third-cycle drugs listed above, and none of the third-cycle prices are effective until 2028 at the earliest — so a household filling a prescription for Trulicity, Xolair, or any of the other 15 drugs this year or next will not see a negotiated price change from this specific round before the calendar turns to 2028.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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