There's unrest tonight over New Jersey based pharmaceutical giant Merck's fight to block Medicare price negotiations.

It was recently mandated by the Biden administration to help seniors, in particular afford their prescriptions.

Well, Merck is calling the White House move extortion.

But groups from across the country turned out today in protest, citing greed.

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan has the story.

Of your lawsuit.

Drop your prices.

Protesters from across the nation rally that New Jersey pharmaceutical giant Merck's Rahway headquarters calling for it to cooperate with Medicare and negotiate lower prices for the nation's most expensive drugs.

It's part of a Biden administration program designed to make medicines more affordable for the 65 million folks on Medicare.

But Merck's leading a no holds barred court battle to block the initiative.

And it is because of price gouging and greed.

Very low salaries.

And we cannot have fair and affordable drug prices.

You see the stories about people going bankrupt and having to sell their houses to.

Get blood thinners, to get insulin, to get blood pressure medication, to get cancer drugs.

Those days are over.

Medicare is expected to announce ten costly drugs that will kick off a series of price negotiations starting in September.

The list could include cancer meds, blood thinners and drugs for asthma and arthritis.

These are meds many struggle to pay for, these advocacy groups say.

And negotiations could save an estimated $98 billion over the next decade, lower insurance premiums and shave out-of-pocket costs just.

To say they won't negotiate at all.

And we have no right to ask them to do so.

It's just outrageous.

I think the United States, compared to other countries, we pay much more for the exact same drugs that they do in other countries.

The coalition delivered a letter to Merck CEO Robert Davis urging him to drop the lawsuit and help Americans afford needed medication.

The letter claims Merck's actions by refusing to negotiate, betray its own mission statement, which professes to operate responsibly every day to enable a safe, sustainable and healthy future for all people.

We're asking them to negotiate fair and lower prices.

There's billions of dollars at stake here.

New lower prices could cost the industry an estimated $4.8 billion in the program's first year of operation.

The drug companies claim that means less money for developing new medicines.

Their research and development costs are half of what they spend on marketing and advertising, generally speaking, across the industry.

So it's like we don't buy.

It in its lawsuit against the Department of Human Services and Medicare.

Merck calls the program political kabuki theater, not negotiation.

It's tantamount to extortion, claiming it violates the company's Fifth Amendment right to just compensation for private property.

Other drugmakers, including George Janssen and Bristol-Myers Squibb, both major New Jersey pharmaceutical companies, have joined in, as has industry lobbyist pharma.

The way that this bill was crafted, this isn't a negotiation and this is the government saying here's what the price is going to be.

You can take it or leave it.

And if you want to leave it, here is the consequences of that.

Farmers Brian Newell says firms that refuse will pay large fines or have to withdraw those products from negotiations.

He says the industry instead supports the $2,000 out-of-pocket cap on drug payments to help keep customer costs down.

The lawsuits expected to land before the U.S. Supreme Court in Rahway.

I'm Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News.