The Trump administration has reached a deal with two drug makers to lower prices of popular GLP-1 diabetes medications for Americans on Medicare and Medicaid as well as for those who purchase the drugs on the administration’s forthcoming TrumpRx web site.
The deal will also see Medicare and Medicaid expand coverage for the medications to permit Americans with certain medical conditions or a body mass index above certain thresholds to receive the injections as treatments for obesity and other serious conditions.
Speaking in the Oval Office Thursday, Trump said he was “thrilled” to announce “tremendous cuts” and “drastic discounts” for the “very effective drugs,” which he referred to as “the fat drugs” and remarked that he’d “never heard anything bad” about the wildly popular medications.
“It’s a triumph for American patients that will save lives and improve the health of millions and millions of Americans,” he said.
However, Trump’s announcement was interrupted when an official behind him passed out in the middle of the comments. The White House later said the person was OK.
Trump said GLP-1 makers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk were “joining the phenomenal list” of drug companies that have capitulated to his administration’s demand that they offer their products on a “most-favored nation” pricing plan, bringing the cost Americans pay for their drugs down to a level on par with countries that pay lower prices through their single-payer health care systems.
For example, Trump said the cost of Wegovy would drop under the plan from $1,350 per month to $250 per month, with Zepbound dropping from $1,080 to $346. Once approved, Eli Lilly’s weight-loss pill will be available for $149.
He then asked: “Did I do a good job?”
Trump also said both companies had agreed to offer their entire catalogues at “deeply discounted prices” on the TrumpRx website, which could be running by the end of this year.
All new medications offered by both companies will also be offered at “most-favored nation” prices, he aded.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had previously expressed opposition to the use of GLP-1 drugs to combat obesity, praised Trump’s efforts to lower the costs for the anti-obesity medications and noted that the medications were “not a panacea” while predicting that their wider availability would impact rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in the U.S.
“We are going to see a decline because of this historic agreement, we’re going to see a decline in cost, but also, more importantly, in the afflictions themselves,” Kennedy said.
The HHS secretary also noted that wider availability of the medications would cause the American public to collectively lose 125 million pounds by this time next year.
“It will allow a lot of people who are locked into high-risk obesity to finally lose weight, to reset and then start doing the kind of things that will address the root causes of obesity,” he said.
