What is EL’s endgame here?

[keangkong]

OTP Exclusive: Lilly Has Been Quietly Exploring Alternative Avenues to Shut Down Tirzepatide Compounding

In an exclusive interview last night with Scott Brunner, CEO of the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding, we uncovered a bombshell: Eli Lilly has been working quietly but diligently on additional means to remove compounded versions of tirzepatide—the active ingredient in Mounjaro and Zepbound—from...

www.onthepen.com

They’ve been trying to say it’s a demonstrably difficult compound since August. But it’s obvious no one can afford it and by next year better drugs will be available so it’s almost like they don’t want people on it? What a truly weird way to drive people away. They could make it affordable and make so much more money. This drug costs $84 in Japan so it’s not like it’s costly to manufacture. Am I missing something here? Do they really think people will pay $1000 a month for it?

My health insurance pays a large of money for me to take Zepbound. Supposedly they pay about $650 every four weeks for it, although with pharmacy benefit managers and the weird way they do things, I know that it pays less for it. However, while you say that no one will pay for Zepbound, many individuals and insurance companies already are.

My lay opinion is that the FDA won't go along with semaglutide and tirzepatide being difficult to compound. They're actually quite easy to compound. Both Novo and Lilly submissions includes deaths reported to the FDA Federal Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), a system includes any reports of deaths made by anyone. No confirmation is required before being inputted into the data pool. Thus, to accept that compounded semaglutide caused many deaths, you'd also need to accept that Wegovy caused a larger number of deaths. (I haven't actually looked up the data on Zepbound, but I expect it to be similar.)

 

[hotdog!]

People big enough to qualify for a prescription for a weight loss drug. Unless they want to focus on people who are already at or near a healthy weight and want to be thinner.

They want to focus on whoever is willing to pay exorbitant prices. And that is a HUGE market, I would casually say that's nearly everybody, from the over 40 BMI "whales" to people who just want to lose 15-20 lbs and have the $$ to spend. There is no shortage of people willing to pay anything for a weight loss drug that works.
It's price-gouging, plain and simple, and this country's "healthcare" system is so corrupt that they refuse to make laws limiting this abuse against public health.

 

[banemorth]

Amusingly enough I had never even heard of compounding pharmacies before the Eli Lily lawsuit. Once I learned about them and found one I trusted and started doing more research I discovered all of this. I feel like the publicity they're giving the grey market is just going to raise more awareness and more people are going to dive in.

 

[keangkong]

It'll go like this...

They will introduce reta as their premium offering. And then keep lowering the price of tirz when you use the coupon/lilly direct if your insurance denies it. Rinse and repeat. They'll go after anyone and everyone until their patent expires.

Based upon what I've observed with other drugs, Lilly won't lower their price for Zepbound when retatrutide comes out.

 

[m100568]

More competition is coming in the next 2-3 years. They will be forced to lower prices to compete for market share. I expect Tirz to be their "low cost" medication, while Reta is the "premium" product for those who can afford it.

 

[keangkong]

More competition is coming in the next 2-3 years. They will be forced to lower prices to compete for market share. I expect Tirz to be their "low cost" medication, while Reta is the "premium" product for those who can afford it.

Based upon what I've observed with other drugs, Lilly won't lower their price for Mounjaro/Zepbound when retatrutide comes out. Novo won't lower its price for Ozempic/Wegovy when cagrilintide/semaglutide comes out.

 

[m100568]

Viking and Amgen are both in Phase III. Worldwide there are over 100 peptides being explored. It is a gold rush. It may take longer than 2-3 years, but competition is coming. It won't just be 2 players seeing how high they can keep the prices. So, according to Lilly, in the meantime you need to either pay up or stay fat and sick. I don't think that they realize how much hatred for them they are creating. Some day, when people have a choice, they will remember what Lilly did.

 

[lazygardener]

Based upon what I've observed with other drugs, Lilly won't lower their price for Mounjaro/Zepbound when retatrutide comes out. Novo won't lower its price for Ozempic/Wegovy when cagrilintide/semaglutide comes out.

Exactly. The price for Ozempic actually went up in Jan 2024, right after Zepbound was approved. They won't compete against themselves or each other. Plus PBMs have been known to drop lower price options because it means they get less in fees. There's not the market pressure here that could otherwise work.

 

[hotdog!]

Anyone who has ever paid an iota of attention to "Big Pharma" should already hate all the U.S. pharmaceutical industry--there's a reason they got that notorious name.

 

[Derflet]

I am a bit of a contrarian here (caveat: I don't have any specific industry expertise).
1) Insurance companies will only cover a small part of the (huge) addressable market and only for limited durations
2) Therefore, this class of drugs will become a consumer product, where the patient, not the physician drives the purchase made with their own money
3) This will drive prices down as supply constraints are alleviated and new competitors come online, the consumer market will still be very profitable at let's say $300/month vs. $1000/month and someone will step in and take that market.
4) The grey market will exist, not because big pharma is benevolent, but because it will never become more than a tiny fraction of the addressable market and will be prohibitively expensive to try and eradicate. In the US I am pretty sure that DHS will not be excited by having a bunch of its budget moved from border security to trying to find small vials of unregulated substance shipped by small Chinese vendors. Yeah, if its Fentanyl they care for obvious reasons, but I think the most we get in this market is a bit of "security theater" that scares potential buyers and makes it a bit harder and more expensive to acquire to keep the grey market smaller.

 

[Dee X]

Anyone who has ever paid an iota of attention to "Big Pharma" should already hate all the U.S. pharmaceutical industry--there's a reason they got that notorious name.

Says the hot dog, CEO of the big meat industry.