Eli Lilly & Co. won’t raise prices on any insulin products now on the market, Chief Executive Officer Dave Ricks told Senator Bernie Sanders at a hearing with big pharma executives as drugmakers come under increased scrutiny over soaring costs.
(Bloomberg) — Eli Lilly & Co.
won’t raise prices on any insulin products now on the market, Chief Executive Officer Dave Ricks told Senator Bernie Sanders at a hearing with big pharma executives as drugmakers come under increased scrutiny over soaring costs.
Ricks was the only executive to agree outright to some of Sanders’ demands at the hearing called by the senator as lawmakers discuss bills to cap insulin costs.
Ricks, along with CEOs of Sanofi and Novo Nordisk A/S, wouldn’t accede to Sanders’ other requests, such as lowering list prices on other drugs that cost less in Europe, including Novo’s popular diabetes drug, Ozempic.
Lilly and Sanofi recently pledged to cap costs for some insulin products at $35 a month, heeding a call by US President Joe Biden for a nationwide ceiling.
But some lawmakers are seeking an even lower cap as well as reforms to rein pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen that drugmakers have accused of driving up prices.
“Will you commit to this committee to never increase the price of any insulin drug again?” Sanders asked Ricks.
“We’ll leave our prices as they are for the insulins on the market today,” he replied, without specifying a time frame.
“In fact we’ve been cutting them.”
In early March, Lilly said it would slash list prices for its Humalog and Humulin insulins by 70% and cap out-of-pocket costs at $35. It also cut prices for its non-branded insulin Lispro injection to $25 a vial.
Novo, following suit, reduced list prices for the insulins NovoLog and NovoLog Mix 70/30 by 75%, and Sanofi later lowered prices for Lantus, its most-prescribed insulin, by 78%.
Ricks refused a request from Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, to commit to offering new Alzheimer’s disease drugs at lower prices than competitors.
The CEO countered that the Medicare program should cover its new experimental drug, donanemab, which recently produced positive results, and that doing so would bring down costs for patients. Ricks has said donanemab would be priced similarly to Leqembi, the Alzheimer’s drug from Eisai Co.
and partner Biogen Inc. that costs about $26,500 a year.
Sanders closed out the hearing raising concerns about what he called “outrageously expensive” new drugs that are coming to market.
(Updates with Lilly CEO comments on Alzheimer’s costs in seventh paragraph.)
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