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Eli Lilly (LLY) is trying to make its obesity drug Zepbound more accessible, specifically for those individuals who may not have insurance. A 2.5 mg single-dose vial will now cost $399 per month while a four-week supply of the 5 mg dose will be $549. That's down from about $1,000 per month. The trade off is that these doses are sold via vials and will need a syringe and needle as opposed to the injector pens the pricier doses utilize.
Yahoo Finance healthcare reporter Anjalee Khemlani reports the details.
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This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.
Let's get to some trending tickers that we're watching. Zepp bound maker, Eli Lilly, releasing a new form of its weight loss drug for roughly half of its usual monthly list price to increase access for patients without insurance. Joining us from more on this, we've got Yahoo finances, Angeli Kamlani. You've been tracking this one.
I have and Brad, to your point, it is specifically for those patients that do not have insurance. And that's actually the key portion of this because we do know that that entails a lot of patients that are on Zep bound, the weight loss drug by Eli Lilly. We do know that it's going to be cutting its lower dose, that's 2 milligrams to $399 per month, and then the 5 milligrams to $549 per month. Now, previously we'd seen the doses which were in vials, uh, about $1,000 a month, and that was where, you know, a lot of the pain point was for access. You can see on your screen the range of prices for the competing GLP-1s on the market. Reminder that Wegovy and Zepp bound are the weight loss ones. So they're the ones which you have to keep an eye on in terms of the coverage because that is where the biggest hurdle has been. Now, we do see some recent data saying that at least employers are starting to cover it, more than 50% have according to some data. And so it really stands to be question about whether or not Medicare will eventually get on it or whether it will stay a self-pay commercial market. Analysts think that this is going to be the market for the weight loss drugs. So this is really an important step, and we will have to see if Novo Nordisk responds for its weight loss drug Wegovy, which was on the market much earlier and is priced higher as you saw just a few moments ago. So this is already heating up basically the competition for GLP-1s without any new entrance. So Lilly had already come in under Novo Nordisk when it first launched the drug, and now, uh, cutting further and then introducing a single use, uh, uh, injector. So that's, you know, really interesting for for the for the market and we'll have to see how it continues.
Well, Ange, I think you bring up a great point though about the kind of price war that it might start to kick off amongst these companies, and this is when it starts to become good news for consumers at least because companies are competing to be to gain market share in the space by lowering prices. Is this the start of that era officially for weight loss drugs?
It could be. Lilly has definitely started. I mean, they shot the starting gun already with the launch of Zepp bound. That was one of the things a lot of analysts had noted was that they had started at a lower price. So they were already signaling that they're ready to compete. We also have to remember that CMS is keeping an eye, that's the center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, keeping an eye on these drugs, all the GLP-1s in fact. And Ozempic rumored to be on the 2027 target list. So already there is reason for them to reduce prices in hopes of potentially escaping being on that price negotiation list.
All right, Ange, thanks so much as always for bringing us your original reporting. We really appreciate it. That was our very own, Angelique Kemlani.
