NEW YORK, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical heavyweights selling popular weight-loss injections, are each dangling discounts to gain an edge and to induce health plans to pay up, reported The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Friday.
"The concessions are slashing as much as half off the price tags of the 1,000 U.S. dollars-plus-a-month medicines," said the report, noting that "a price battle has broken out in the hot market."
For people who pay out of pocket, Lilly recently introduced vials of its drug Zepbound that cost as little as 399 dollars a month. To compete, Novo Nordisk ramped up its rebating -- average Wegovy rebates rose to about 51 percent of list price in the second quarter from about 35 percent a year earlier.
Price concessions are a new, major development in the burgeoning market for weight-loss drugs, after high prices and limited supplies led many health plans to refuse coverage and prompted some patients to turn to lower-priced but unapproved custom-made versions.
"The moves could prod more health plans to begin paying for the medicines," said the report. "That would help some workers who are clamoring for the drugs -- but unable to afford them without health insurance -- to finally be able to fill prescriptions."
Lilly's Zepbound and Novo Nordisk's Wegovy are among the hottest-selling medicines in the United States, along with their twins for diabetes: Mounjaro and Ozempic. They have been so popular that some health plans that initially agreed to cover the medicines stopped because of the cost. Wegovy, which came out in 2021, has a list price of nearly 1,350 dollars a month in America. ■
