Drug manufacturers have announced 2026 price hikes for at least 350 brand-name prescription drugs. While the number of drug price increases rose from 250 in 2025, the average price increase is about 4%, similar to the 2025 increases. The affected drugs include vaccines for COVID, RSV, and shingles, as well as the cancer drug Ibrance.
At the same time, drug manufacturers announced cuts to nine drugs, including a 40% cut for the Boehringer Ingelheim diabetes drug Jardiance and related treatments. Jardiance is one of the ten drugs for which the U.S. government negotiated lower Medicare prices in 2026. The negotiations lowered the price of Jardiance by about two-thirds for Medicare patients.
The Trump administration also reached deals with 14 drug manufacturers on medications for low-income Medicaid recipients and patients paying cash. Participating companies include Pfizer, Sanofi, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, and GSK, even though they have also increased other drug prices in 2026. The simultaneous price increases for some drugs and negotiated discounts for other drugs seem to be setting up a system in which insurers pay one price, and consumers pay another altogether.
Pfizer is the drug manufacturer announcing the most price hikes targeting about 80 different drugs, including prescription drugs Ibrance, Nurtec, and Paxlovid, along with some hospital-administered drugs like morphine and hydromorphone. Most of Pfizer’s price increases ring in at less than 10% as compared to its previous prices, except for a 15% price hike for the COVID vaccine Comirnaty and the quadrupling of prices on some less expensive hospital-administered drugs. Nonetheless, Pfizer claims that its drug price increases, on average, remain below the overall inflation rate and are necessary to address increased business costs and the development of new medicines.
Drug manufacturers have scaled back price increases in the U.S., which were much larger in previous years. Criticism from lawmakers and government program-related penalties have effectively kept increases generally lower in recent years. Meanwhile, European drug manufacturer GSK has increased the prices of about 20 drugs by about 2 – 8.9%.
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