CMS has pro­posed two manda­to­ry pay­ment mod­els aimed at low­er­ing drug prices in Medicare, ini­tia­tives that build on Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's “most fa­vored na­tion” plan but are like­ly to face push­back from in­dus­try.

The two pi­lot pro­grams un­der the Cen­ter for Medicare and Med­ic­aid In­no­va­tion are de­signed to re­duce the price of drugs for ben­e­fi­cia­ries in Medicare Part B and Medicare Part D, re­spec­tive­ly. Each mod­el would test a new in­ter­na­tion­al pric­ing bench­mark and re­quire phar­ma com­pa­nies to pay re­bates to Medicare if the price of their drug ex­ceeds that mea­sure.

The pro­pos­als were re­leased on Fri­day af­ter the White House an­nounced nine new deals with drug­mak­ers to bring US prices in line with cheap­er rates abroad. It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether com­pa­nies that have signed on to those MFN deals would be ex­empt from the pay­ment mod­els.

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb is the sec­ond drug­mak­er to take its In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act chal­lenge to the Supreme Court, ar­gu­ing that the pro­gram un­law­ful­ly forces it to sell its block­buster blood thin­ner Eliquis at a steep dis­count.

“Con­gress want­ed to ob­tain med­i­cines for Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries with­out pay­ing fair mar­ket val­ue,” BMS wrote in a pe­ti­tion ob­tained by End­points News. “To that end, the Pro­gram hoists a men­ac­ing ‘sword of Damo­cles’ over any man­u­fac­tur­er whose prod­uct has been cho­sen for ‘ne­go­ti­a­tion.’”

Bris­tol My­ers filed the pe­ti­tion on Fri­day, just weeks be­fore the first ne­go­ti­at­ed prices of the pro­gram are slat­ed to take ef­fect on Jan. 1. Le­gal ex­perts have said that while the Supreme Court like­ly won’t step in be­fore the new year, drug­mak­ers may still have a chance to change how ne­go­ti­at­ed prices un­der the law are im­ple­ment­ed af­ter the fact.

The US Jus­tice De­part­ment charged sev­er­al peo­ple with in­sid­er trad­ing and mar­ket ma­nip­u­la­tion in a case that cen­ters on Cal­i­for­nia biotech Ole­ma On­col­o­gy and its lead can­di­date for breast can­cer.

Broth­ers Muham­mad Saad Shoukat and Muham­mad Arham Shoukat, along with friends, “ac­tive­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed the stock price of Ole­ma,” ac­cord­ing to a re­lease shared Fri­day by the US At­tor­ney's Of­fice for the Dis­trict of New Jer­sey. The Ole­ma case was one of three over­lap­ping cas­es in which six peo­ple were charged, one of which in­volves in­sid­er trad­ing al­le­ga­tions not re­lat­ed to Ole­ma that gen­er­at­ed at least $41 mil­lion in il­lic­it prof­its.

Chi­na's new com­mer­cial in­sur­ance for­mu­la­ry looks to ex­pand pa­tient ac­cess to Alzheimer's dis­ease med­i­cines from Eli Lil­ly and Ei­sai while po­ten­tial­ly boost­ing rev­enue for the com­pa­nies.

An­nounced in De­cem­ber, the Com­mer­cial Health In­sur­ance In­no­v­a­tive Drug List is de­signed to cov­er ad­vanced ther­a­pies that fall out­side ba­sic gov­ern­ment in­sur­ance. For drug­mak­ers, the list has the po­ten­tial to bol­ster bot­tom lines, though it is un­clear if, or how quick­ly, Chi­nese com­mer­cial health in­sur­ers are go­ing to cov­er these med­i­cines.

Of the 19 med­i­cines in­clud­ed in the in­sur­ance for­mu­la­ry un­veiled ear­li­er this month, Bio­gen and Ei­sai’s Leqem­bi and Eli Lil­ly’s Kisun­la stick out as the most com­mer­cial­ly mean­ing­ful, ac­cord­ing to an­a­lysts. As the world's most pop­u­lous coun­try, Chi­na has the largest num­ber of Alzheimer's pa­tients in the world, but pa­tients can strug­gle to af­ford treat­ments.