Eli Lilly hikes price of diabetes drug Mounjaro in UK as Trump pressures pharma to align drug costs

CNBC

a day ago

Eli Lilly on Thursday said it is raising the list price of its blockbuster diabetes drug Mounjaro in the U.K. starting in September, as President Donald Trump pressures drugmakers to lower U.S. drug prices and hike them abroad.
In a statement, Eli Lilly said it reached an agreement with the U.K. government to increase the list price of the weekly injection, while "maintaining access" for patients covered under the publicly funded health-care system, the National Health Service, or NHS.
Eli Lilly told CNBC that the price hike will not affect the drug's availability under NHS, and it wants to work with the government to boost access. The company added that it does not determine prices that private health-care providers set, but is working with them to ensure access to Mounjaro.
In a statement on Thursday, NHS said Mounjaro's list price increase "will not affect NHS commissioning of tirzepatide in England for eligible people living with obesity, based on clinical priority, or as a treatment for type 2 diabetes." Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in Mounjaro and its counterpart for weight loss, Zepbound.
Mounjaro's current list price in the UK ranges from £92 (about $124.89) to £122 a month, depending on the dose size, according to Eli Lilly. The drug's new list price will increase to between £133 and £330 starting on Sept. 1.
The company added that it is working with certain governments and expects to make pricing adjustments in those countries by that date. In the U.S., the list price for a month's supply of Mounjaro is $1,079.77 before insurance and other rebates.
Eli Lilly said it supports the Trump administration's goal of keeping the U.S. the "world's leading destination for biopharmaceutical research and manufacturing, and the objective of more fairly sharing the costs of breakthrough medical research across developed countries."
"This rebalancing may be difficult, but it means the prices for medicines paid by governments and health systems need to increase in other developed markets like Europe in order to make them lower in the US," the company said in the statement.
The announcement comes after Trump in July sent separate letters to 17 drugmakers, including Eli Lilly, calling on them to take steps to lower drug prices by Sept. 29. The move built on the president's executive order in May reviving a controversial plan – the "most favored nation" policy – that aims to slash drug costs by tying the prices of some medicines in the U.S. to the significantly lower ones abroad.
U.S. prescription drug prices are two-to-three times higher on average than those in other developed nations – and up to 10 times more than in certain countries, according to the Rand Corp., a public policy think tank. Trump has said he wants to narrow that gap to stop Americans from being "ripped off."
Eli Lilly's announcement on Thursday comes as the industry braces for Trump's planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S. In its statement, the company said it opposes those tariffs, arguing they will "raise costs, limit patient access, and undermine American leadership, especially for companies already investing heavily in domestic manufacturing."
In recent months, Eli Lilly was among several drugmakers to announce new plans to invest in U.S. manufacturing sites.