Beginning January 1, 2027, Medicare’s second round of drug-price negotiations cuts the monthly list price of Pomalyst, a multiple myeloma treatment made by Bristol Myers Squibb, to a negotiated $8,650 from $21,744, a reduction of about 60 percent. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services set that figure as part of a fact sheet covering all 15 drugs selected for the program’s second cycle, and the Pomalyst cut sits among the deeper reductions in the group. Whether that number actually lowers what an individual Part D enrollee pays each month depends on a separate figure the same fact sheet does not address.
Bristol Myers Squibb’s Pomalyst and the second round of negotiated “maximum fair prices”
CMS calls the negotiated figure a maximum fair price, a ceiling the agency reaches through a structured exchange of offers with the manufacturer rather than a public bid or a flat percentage cut applied evenly across every drug. Pomalyst is one of 15 drugs in this second cycle, a group that also includes the diabetes combination pill Janumet and the psoriasis treatment Otezla, with negotiated cuts across the round ranging from 38 percent to 85 percent depending on the drug. The program’s first cycle, covering ten different drugs, took effect a year earlier in January 2026, making this the second annual wave of negotiated prices to reach Part D plans. CMS negotiates each price separately with the relevant manufacturer over several rounds of written offers and counteroffers spread across roughly a year, rather than setting a single across-the-board discount rate for every drug selected in a given cycle.
Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that forms in plasma cells inside bone marrow, and patients who reach the point of needing Pomalyst have typically already cycled through at least two other regimens that stopped working, which is part of why a single month of treatment carries a price in the tens of thousands of dollars before any negotiation.
Pomalyst, known generically as pomalidomide, carries an FDA-approved indication for multiple myeloma in combination with dexamethasone for patients who have already tried at least two prior therapies, including lenalidomide and a proteasome inhibitor, according to the drug’s prescribing information. Bristol Myers Squibb, which markets the drug through its Celgene subsidiary, is the manufacturer CMS negotiated with to set the $8,650 negotiated price, down from a $21,744 list price.
Inside the kit: The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit pairs the new Part D out-of-pocket cap with a medication and cost tracker, useful for a Pomalyst prescription whose negotiated price and a beneficiary’s running yearly total are two separate numbers to keep straight. Track the Pomalyst costs against the yearly cap in The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit.
Why a 60 percent cut may not move a Part D enrollee’s own bill
For a Part D enrollee who has already spent $2,000 on covered prescriptions within a calendar year, the size of the gap between Pomalyst’s list price and its negotiated price stops being the figure that determines a monthly bill. CMS’s redesigned Part D benefit sets that $2,000 amount as the annual out-of-pocket threshold, after which an enrollee owes nothing more for covered drugs for the rest of the year, according to CMS’s program instructions.
A monthly Pomalyst prescription at either price is high enough that most patients taking it would reach that $2,000 threshold within the first one or two fills of a plan year. Once that happens, the negotiated price mainly changes how a plan, the federal government and Bristol Myers Squibb divide the remaining cost among themselves, rather than what the patient pays directly at the pharmacy counter for the rest of that year.
The negotiated price still shapes an enrollee’s bill earlier in the plan year, during the deductible and initial-coverage phases, when coinsurance is calculated as a percentage of whatever price the plan and pharmacy are charged for the drug rather than as a flat monthly cap. A lower negotiated price during those earlier months means a lower percentage-based coinsurance bill before the $2,000 threshold is reached.
The $12 billion CMS attaches to this round, and the officials behind it
CMS’s November 25, 2025 announcement of the second cycle’s prices tied the full set of 15 drugs, Pomalyst among them, to an estimated $12 billion in net savings for the program, a roughly 44 percent reduction against what those same drugs would have cost Part D without negotiation. The release counted about 5.3 million of the 53 million people with Medicare Part D coverage as having used one of the 15 drugs during 2024, the year CMS used to calculate that savings estimate.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in that announcement that the administration will use every tool at its disposal to deliver affordable health care to seniors, a line CMS attached to the second cycle’s prices as a group rather than to Pomalyst specifically. The Medicare.gov fact sheet describing 2027 changes lists the negotiated prices for the next 15 drugs, Pomalyst included, as one of several program changes arriving on that same January 1, 2027 date.
Across the 15 drugs in this cycle, cuts ranged from a 71 percent reduction on the diabetes and weight-loss drug Ozempic to a 38 percent reduction on the movement-disorder drug Austedo, with Pomalyst’s 60 percent cut closer to the steep end of that spread than the shallow end. That range reflects each drug’s own separate negotiation rather than one formula applied evenly, leaving Bristol Myers Squibb’s $8,650 price as a single data point in a program CMS has already begun extending into a third cycle for 2028.
A negotiated price is not the same as a beneficiary’s yearly total
CMS’s second-round fact sheet states what Medicare will pay for Pomalyst under the negotiated maximum fair price, but it does not track what an individual Part D enrollee has already spent on covered drugs in a given year, or how close that spending sits to the annual out-of-pocket threshold. That gap between a drug’s list price and a person’s running yearly total is where the size of a price cut stops answering the practical question of what comes next on a bill.
The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit includes the new Part D out-of-pocket cap explained alongside a medication and cost tracker, organizing a running total of covered drug spending against that yearly threshold.
See the out-of-pocket cap explanation and the medication tracker in The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
