(a) Establishment and issuance of a listing.

(1) CMS will establish and issue listings that identify and set upper limits for multiple source drugs available for purchase by retail community pharmacies on a nationwide basis that FDA has rated at least three drug products as pharmaceutically and therapeutically equivalent in the “Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations” which is available at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/ob/. Only pharmaceutically and therapeutically equivalent formulations will be used to determine such limit, and such limit will only be applied to those equivalent drug products.

(2) CMS publishes the list of multiple source drugs for which upper limits have been established and any revisions to the list in Medicaid Program issuances.

(b) Specific upper limits.

(1) The agency's payments for multiple source drugs identified and listed periodically by CMS in Medicaid Program issuances must not exceed, in the aggregate, prior to the application of any federal or state drug rebate considerations, payment levels determined by applying for each pharmaceutically and therapeutically equivalent multiple source drug product, a professional dispensing fee established by the state agency plus an amount established by CMS that is equal to 175 percent of the weighted average of the most recently reported monthly AMPs for such multiple source drugs, using manufacturer submitted utilization data for each multiple source drug for which a Federal upper limit (FUL) is established.

(2) Exception. If the amount established by CMS in paragraph (b)(1) of this section for a pharmaceutically and therapeutically equivalent multiple source drug product is lower than the average retail community pharmacies' acquisition cost for such drug product, as determined by the most current national survey of such costs, CMS will use a percent of the weighted average of the most recently reported monthly AMPs that equals the most current average acquisition costs paid by retail community pharmacies as determined by such survey.

(c) Ensuring a drug is for sale nationally. To assure that a multiple source drug is for sale nationally, CMS will consider the following additional criteria:

(1) The AMP of a terminated NDC will not be used to set the Federal upper limit (FUL) beginning with the first day of the month after the termination date reported by the manufacturer to CMS.

(2) The monthly AMP units data will be used to calculate the weighted average of monthly AMPs for all multiple source drugs to establish the FUL.

(d) The FUL will be applied as an aggregate upper limit.