US patients struggle to obtain Eli Lilly’s half-price insulin

US patients struggle to obtain Eli Lilly’s half-price insulin (FT)

• According to recent data from GoodRX, an app tracking drug prices, only 3% of insurance claims for Eli Lilly’s insulin were for the half-price version that the company revealed shortly before being questioned by Congress on soaring insulin prices.
• According to the article, many pharmacists do not know that a cheaper version is available or it cannot be accessed because it wasn’t added to individual patient’s list of drugs that are covered.
• The company said it was aggressively working to increase awareness as well as access to the cheaper diabetes drug.

Berenberg view

• Best Healthcare analysts expect a strong downward pricing pressure and slowing volume growth for the previous classes of drugs such as DPP4 and basal insulins.
• This will likely result in a slowdown in the sales growth for the global pharmaceutical market. We project the global diabetes pharma market to grow at only 3% CAGR to reach $46bn by 2025.
• While the overall diabetes pharma market is set to slow, GLP1 and SGLT4 are likely to experience rapid growth.

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