President Joe Biden. Credit: Adam Schultz/White House
President Joe Biden said Wednesday that prescription drugmakers should lower their drug prices across the board, not just offer good deals on specific medications.
Biden issued the statement in response to news that Eli Lilly will offer a direct-to-consumer version of its anti-obesity drug Zepbound for $399 for a month's supply, down from a typical list price of $1,000-per-month for other, comparable anti-obesity drugs.
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"This a welcome first step for American families struggling to access these drugs," Biden said.
But Biden noted that U.S. residents pay prices for prescription drugs that are often two to three times more than what families in other countries pay for the same drugs, and that prices for GLP-1 agonist drugs like Zepbound and Wegovy may be up to six times higher than the prices in countries like Canada.
"It's completely unacceptable," Biden said.
Biden said his administration is implementing new laws that cap out-of-pocket costs for insulin for people with Medicare coverage at $35 per month; require drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare if prices for their drugs rise faster than the inflation rate; and let Medicare managers negotiate prices for some drugs.
He did not announce any new proposals for addressing high drug prices.
High prices for some popular, brand-name drugs that are still on patent, such as the GLP-1 agonists, have made attacks on "Big Pharma" a popular theme this year for both Democrats and Republicans.
Rhetoric against drugmakers has heated up in spite of figures from the government's National Health Expenditures team showing that tougher competition has cut average annual U.S. prescription price increases to less than 3%.
What it means
For employers and benefits brokers, one concern is that federal government efforts to hold down drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid enrollees could lead to higher drug prices for patients with commercial health insurance coverage or coverage from self-insured employer health plans.
"It's too soon to tell if that will be the case," analysts from Segal said earlier this year in an assessment of prescription drug pricing trends.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
