Uncle Sam Wants You—to Fight High Drug Prices

Medicare is on a binge to fill some of the most closely watched and consequential new jobs in the federal government: drug-price negotiators.

The U.S. couldn’t haggle over drug prices before. Under last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, federal officials gained the power to square off with drugmakers over how much Medicare pays for a handful of the costliest medicines.

Which is why Uncle Sam has been hunting—through job postings, at least one information session and word-of-mouth—for economists, data scientists and pharmacists to staff the Medicare Drug Rebate and Negotiations Group.

At stake are billions of dollars in yearly government spending and pharmaceutical-company revenue—and for some people on Medicare, thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs.

To lure applicants, Medicare officials have touted the opportunity to make an impact on the $400 billion U.S. prescription-drug market and help reduce financial pains for patients burdened by high drug costs.

“The IRA is the most significant impact to the pharmaceutical industry since the Affordable Care Act in 2010," a Medicare official said in a careers informational webinar last year. “Negotiation of drug pricing represents the new work for Medicare."

The government has hired more than 70 people out of the 96 positions it aims to fill to date, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman said.

Some of the hires have had experience in drug-price negotiations from working in private industry, such as with pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers, the CMS spokesman said.

Hires include veterans of major healthcare companies such as Humana and CVS Health, business consulting firms such as Avalere Health, and the advocacy group Families USA, according to CMS employee profiles posted on LinkedIn. The division director in charge of negotiations was previously a drug-pricing strategist at drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb.

The agency tapped longtime employee Christina Ritter to lead the group as its director, overseeing its six divisions, the CMS spokesman said. In addition to handling price negotiations, the group will also enforce the IRA’s new penalties on drugmakers that raise prices higher than the overall inflation rate.

Ritter took the job after leading a section of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, a sub-agency created by the Affordable Care Act to develop more efficient ways to pay for healthcare. Ritter declined a request for comment through a CMS spokesman.

Many of the group’s jobs offer salaries starting at $100,000 and up, and benefits including health insurance, remote work options and up to 26 days of paid vacation time each year, according to the CMS website.

Former CMS official Sean Cavanaugh said that he has been recommending working at the agency because it would provide valuable experience for working in the healthcare industry. When people ask him for career advice, he has been encouraging them to apply, citing the better-than-average odds of landing a good job during the current hiring spree.

“It doesn’t happen all the time that they’re hiring 100 new people in one office," Cavanaugh said.

Medicare is expected to begin negotiating with drugmakers on 10 products in February, and the new lower prices will take effect in 2026. An additional 15 to 20 drugs would be negotiated each year going forward.

The negotiators’ work will be under a microscope. The pharmaceutical industry, a powerful interest group in Washington, has filed several lawsuits challenging the negotiations and hopes to persuade lawmakers to repeal or dial back the program in the coming years.

The industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America declined to comment.

During negotiations, drugmakers will ramp up the pressure on Medicare officials to get the highest prices possible, said Anna Kaltenboeck, a health economist and former Senate staffer who helped draft the IRA’s drug price negotiation provisions.

“They’re gonna have to have some thick skin because the lobbying is going to be intense," said Kaltenboeck, now a principal at health-research and consulting firm ATI Advisory.

Write to Joseph Walker at joseph.walker@wsj.com