Yesterday, Eli Lilly announced 50% price cuts to the two lowest doses of its blockbuster weight-loss medication, Zepbound. This is for patients who opt to purchase them via the company's telehealth platform, LillyDirect. The two doses will be sold in vials instead of inside expensive auto-injector pens.
Up until recently, there has been a shortage of Zepbound, partly due to the complexity of manufacturing large enough quantities of auto-injector pens. In times of shortage, the US allows competitors to sell non-branded versions of treatments containing the active ingredient, which they call compound drugs. It has created a massive parallel market.
Eli Lilly has managed to end the shortage and is now pushing hard to squash the compound drug market. These discounts will help Eli Lilly undercut the no-name competitors and assist in cutting out middlemen in the supply chain too. I suspect that once the supply of auto-injectors improves, and when the parallel market is crushed, Eli Lilly will slowly increase prices again.