Pharmaceutical giant Johnson Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) is no stranger to legal issues. The company is still dealing with a barrage of lawsuits alleging that its talc-based products gave customers cancer. This dark cloud has hovered above Johnson Johnson's head for a while now, but it is facing another legal obstacle of a different nature. 

In August 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Among the many things that landmark legislation achieved was to grant Medicare the ability to negotiate directly with drugmakers on the prices it pays for some of the drugs the U.S. government spends the most on each year.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released the first list of 10 drugs for which prices will be negotiated. The agreed-upon prices will take effect in 2026. Three of these medicines are marketed by Johnson Johnson: the immunosuppressant Stelara, cancer drug Imbruvica (which it co-markets with ), and blood thinner Xarelto (rights for which it shares with Bayer).

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Source Fool.com