Medicare drug negotiation delayed for new peptide class—four extra years of high prices
H.R. 8857 — Next GEN Act of 2026 · Filed by Joseph Morelle (D-NY) · 4 cosponsors · Introduced May 15, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill amends the Medicare drug price negotiation program to give engineered cyclic peptides (a specific class of synthetic drugs made from amino acids) an 11-year exclusion period before they can be subject to price negotiation, instead of the standard 7-year period. The effect is to delay Medicare's ability to negotiate prices on these drugs for four additional years, protecting manufacturers' pricing power during that window.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a targeted extension of pricing exclusivity for a narrowly defined drug class. While framed as a technical amendment, it functions as a direct subsidy to manufacturers of engineered cyclic peptides by delaying Medicare's negotiating power.
What the text implies
- The 11-year exclusion applies only to engineered cyclic peptides meeting all six criteria (amino acid polymer, cyclic structure, ≤40 amino acids, genetically encoded library screening, non-natural, self-administered). This narrow definition may have been reverse-engineered to match specific drugs in development or recently approved, creating a de facto single-company or single-drug carve-out witho
- The effective date applies to 'lists published on or after' enactment, meaning drugs already on negotiation lists are unaffected—the benefit flows only to future drugs meeting the definition, suggesting this targets a pipeline of anticipated products.
The full analysis lists 3 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
Manufacturers of engineered cyclic peptides; Pharmaceutical companies with pipeline drugs in this class