Every drug company behind a medicine selected for the third round of Medicare’s drug price negotiation program has chosen to keep participating rather than walk away, CMS’s negotiation page confirms. That matters because CMS lists participation separately from selection: being chosen for a negotiation cycle and choosing to stay in the program are two different facts the agency tracks and reports on its own page. With all 15 drugmakers staying in for the third cycle, the negotiated prices covering their drugs are on track to take effect in 2028, one full cycle behind the 15 drugs whose negotiated prices arrive first, on January 1, 2027. The Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program adds a new group of high-spend drugs to the negotiation list each year, so the third cycle represents the program’s third annual round of selections since it began identifying drugs for negotiation, each round moving through the same participation, negotiation and price-effective sequence as the one before it.
Every Manufacturer of the 15 Selected Drugs Said Yes
CMS’s own negotiation program page states plainly that “the drug companies that manufacture all 15 drugs payable under Medicare Part B and/or covered under Medicare Part D selected for the third cycle of negotiation have chosen to participate in the Negotiation Program.” The page, last modified September 22, 2026, treats this as a confirmed status rather than a pending decision: every manufacturer with a drug on the third-cycle list has agreed to negotiate a maximum fair price with CMS rather than exit the program. The negotiated prices resulting from that third cycle are set to take effect beginning in 2028, the initial price applicability year CMS has assigned to this group of drugs. CMS’s page treats participation as a status each manufacturer affirmatively holds rather than a formality, distinguishing it from the separate question of which specific drugs and companies make up the third-cycle list, detail the page reserves for its drug-by-drug listings rather than the summary text.
Where the gap remains: a negotiated Medicare rate sets what the program pays a manufacturer, but it does not by itself tell a beneficiary what a specific plan will charge for that drug at the pharmacy counter once the new rate applies. Check a plan’s own drug cost tools in The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit.
The 2027 Prices Arriving First
The third cycle is not the first set of negotiated prices Medicare beneficiaries will see. A separate, earlier group of 15 drugs covered under Medicare Part D has maximum fair prices going into effect January 1, 2027, a full year ahead of the third-cycle prices. That second-cycle group moved through the same negotiation process the third cycle is now completing, meaning the third-cycle drugmakers’ decision to participate follows a template CMS has already carried through to a finished, dated price for an earlier round of drugs. Unlike the third cycle, the second-cycle group covers Part D drugs specifically, the prescription-drug side of Medicare rather than the Part B and Part D mix the third cycle spans, a distinction CMS’s page maintains throughout its cycle-by-cycle tracking. The staggered timeline, one cycle’s prices landing each January over consecutive years, is how the program is structured to phase in negotiated pricing across an expanding list of drugs rather than resetting prices for every covered drug at once.
One Drug Still in Renegotiation
The third cycle includes a detail beyond the 15 newly selected drugs. CMS’s page also tracks one additional drug selected for renegotiation, a separate track for a medicine whose price was already negotiated in an earlier cycle and is now being revisited. The manufacturer of that renegotiated drug is also continuing to participate in the program, according to the same page, keeping the entire third-cycle roster, the 15 newly selected drugs plus the one renegotiation, inside the negotiation process rather than outside it. Renegotiation exists because a maximum fair price set in an earlier cycle is not necessarily permanent; CMS’s program allows certain previously negotiated drugs to be revisited on their own schedule, distinct from the yearly cycle that adds newly eligible high-spend drugs to the list for the first time. CMS’s page does not name the individual drugs or manufacturers in the third cycle in the text summarizing participation status, publishing that detail instead in the program’s separate drug-by-drug listings.
How the Program Reaches 2028
Taken together, the two cycles show a program advancing on a fixed calendar rather than a one-time event. The 2027 prices for the second-cycle drugs and the 2028 prices for the third-cycle drugs represent two consecutive years of negotiated pricing taking hold for Medicare Part B and Part D, with participation from every named manufacturer confirmed on both. CMS’s page, current as of its September 22, 2026 update, is the operative public record tracking which drugs and which cycles have reached that confirmed-participation stage, and it is the page the agency directs beneficiaries and manufacturers alike to for the current status of each negotiation round. For a Medicare beneficiary tracking a specific prescription, the distinction between the two cycles is practical rather than academic: a drug on the second-cycle list is priced under the new maximum fair price starting with the first payment cycle of 2027, while a third-cycle drug continues at its prior pricing basis for another year before the 2028 price applies, even though both cycles have now reached the same confirmed-participation milestone.
What a Negotiated Drug Rate Does Not Answer at the Pharmacy
CMS confirms that every manufacturer behind the third cycle’s selected drugs is staying in the negotiation program, with new rates due in 2028, but a maximum fair rate set at the federal level is a ceiling on what Medicare pays, not a fixed number every plan charges a member at checkout. That leaves the separate job of checking a specific plan’s own formulary tier and coverage rules for any one of these drugs.
The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit opens with the new Part D out-of-pocket cap and pairs it with a medication and cost tracker, giving a household a way to log what a negotiated drug actually costs under their own plan as each cycle’s rates take effect.
Open the out-of-pocket cap and the cost tracker in The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and checked against the primary source linked above.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
