London
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Eli Lilly will significantly increase the price of its weight-loss drug Mounjaro in the United Kingdom in a bid to bring down prices in the United States after weeks of pressure from the Trump administration.
The US drugmaker announced Thursday that it was rolling out price hikes across Europe, with prices rising in the UK from September.
The price of a month’s supply of the highest dose of Mounjaro in the UK will rise from £122 ($165) to £330 ($447), Eli Lilly confirmed to CNN, representing a 170% increase.
Eli Lilly (LLY) confirmed that prices for Mounjaro accessed through the NHS, the UK’s public health service, would remain unchanged. Around 220,000 Brits are expected to access Mounjaro, which is also used by diabetics, through the NHS in the first three years of its introduction.
Private suppliers will be able to negotiate with Eli Lilly in an attempt to gain discounts. Following Eli Lilly’s announcement, Juniper, a private weight-loss clinic in the UK, published a blog offering Mounjaro patients a pathway to switch to Wegovy, a competing weight-loss jab manufactured by Danish group Novo Nordisk (NVO).
In a statement to CNN, a spokesperson for Eli Lilly said the company had originally agreed a UK list price that was significantly below the European average to prevent delays in NHS availability when Mounjaro was first launched in the country.
“With changes in the environment and new clinical evidence supporting the value of Mounjaro, we are now aligning the list price more consistently to ensure fair global contributions to the cost of innovation,” the spokesperson said.
US pharmaceutical companies have faced intense pressure from President Donald Trump over the disparity in drug prices between the United States and Europe. Trump has accused foreign nations of “freeloading” at the expense of American innovation.
Eli Lilly said in its statement that it was committed to keeping the United States as the global leader in drug research and manufacturing. The drugmaker said it had in recent months “intensified efforts to align prices across developed countries, especially in Europe.”
“This rebalancing may be difficult, but it means the prices for medicines paid by governments and health systems need to increase in other developed markets like Europe in order to make them lower in the US,” the company said in the statement.
In July, Trump sent letters to 17 major pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, ordering them to lower the price of prescription drugs in the United States.
At the time, Chris Meekins, managing director of health policy research at Raymond James, told CNN that, while pressure from Trump may result in price increases or delayed access to drugs in other countries, it was unlikely to directly help the American consumer.
Trump signed an executive order in May that aimed to force US pharmaceutical companies to bring European and US drug prices into harmony under a “Most Favored Nation” rule.
While several experts have previously told CNN that Trump has limited legal power to force drugmakers to lower domestic prices, his efforts indicate a strong political will that could lead to drugmakers changing their pricing voluntarily.
The president has been particularly critical of the price disparity in weight-loss drugs across the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaking in May upon signing his executive order, Trump referenced a conversation with a friend who complained about the difference in the pricing of what Trump called the “fat shot drug” between the UK and the US.
“He said, ‘I just paid $88, and in New York I paid $1,300. What the hell is going on?’ So, I checked, and it’s the same box made in the same plant by the same company,” Trump said.
