Welcome to the Week in Review.

White House Announces Agreements With Eli Lilly & Novo Nordisk on Blockbuster Weight Loss Drugs

From the Oval Office on Thursday, President Trump announced lower prices on several blockbuster weight-loss drugs, including Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound, for patients on Medicare, as well as for anyone who purchases them through the administration’s forthcoming TrumpRx direct-to-consumer website. Though many of the details have not been made public, including how the $50 cost-sharing proposal might work in Medicare and how it might affect current plan costs, the White House fact sheet outlined that TrumpRx will offer Ozempic and Wegovy for $350 and Zepbound for $346 per month. That’s a steep reduction from current list prices of between $1,000 and $1,350 per month, but still higher than prices for these drugs in other high-income nations. Additionally, Medicare will now cover these drugs for weight loss, expanding coverage and reducing the price to $245 per month. With Ozempic and Wegovy both included in the second round of Medicare negotiation, important questions remain about how these agreements will relate to the Medicare-negotiated prices and whether this new voluntary initiative will complement or complicate the savings patients are due to receive, especially given that Lilly and Novo have a long history of price-gouging American patients who take insulin and have consistently increased their prices in lockstep with one anotherStill, this announcement is welcome news for patients like Gloria, whose health and well-being depend on one of these life-changing but wildly overpriced drugs. — [White House, KFF, P4AD, Washington Post, STAT News, POLITICO, CBS News, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Endpoints News, STAT News, ABC News, Reuters]

Novo Manipulates Searches to Push Ozempic

Ozempic manufacturer Novo Nordisk spent $7.5 million on paid keywords over the course of two years, according to a new analysis from JAMA, pushing direct-to-consumer advertisements to individuals searching the internet for weight loss solutions despite the drug not being FDA-approved for weight loss. Over 3,500 of the keywords didn’t even contain a mention of the drug, in what the researchers concluded was an attempt to influence consumers and even “potentially circumvent traditional advertising regulations.” Direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug ads are a practice largely unique to the U.S., and estimates have found that each 1.5% increase in DTC TV ad spending is associated with a 10% increase in sales. The Trump administration cracked down on misleading DTC ads with an executive order in September, organizations like Generation Patient have been working to fight DTC social media ads, and we’ve endorsed legislation like The No Handouts for Drug Advertisements Act that would eliminate a tax break that makes it cheap and easy for Big Pharma to flood the airwaves with ads. Internet searches are just another way pharmaceutical companies funnel misleading advertisements directly to consumers through less-regulated methods, and it’s time for the law to catch up. — [JAMA Network, STAT News, TIME, White House, Sen. Hawley, NPR]

AstraZeneca Downplays the Impact of MFN

Following its mid-October MFN drug pricing deal with the Trump administration, AstraZeneca executives are downplaying the financial impact. On Thursday, CFO Aradhana Sarin told Bloomberg that the company could fully “absorb” the cost of the agreement, while at the same time, CEO Pascal Soriot appeared on Bloomberg TV, warning that lower U.S. prices could harm an “environment that attracts investment from large pharma companies”. It’s a familiar contradiction: publicly warning that lower prices will devastate innovation while assuring investors that profits are secure. It’s the same playbook the industry has used with Medicare negotiation for years. Big Pharma has repeatedly claimed negotiation would stifle R&D and limit new cures, yet in shareholder meetings and earnings calls, pharmaceutical executives routinely emphasize that the impact on their bottom line will be minimal. This is an industry that could lose $1 trillion in revenue over a decade and remain one of the most profitable industries in the world, and these conflicting messages reveal what’s really at stake: not innovation, but preserving the system that allows drugmakers to charge whatever they want, for as long as they can. — [Bloomberg, TV Eyes, West Health]

FDA Clears Way for Faster Personalized Gene Editing Therapy

The FDA is set to publish an outline for the agency’s new approach to simplifying custom gene-editing treatments this month, in an attempt to streamline the lengthy and expensive approval process. By allowing patients with related genetic disorders to be grouped into a combined trial, researchers say the cost for custom-made cell and gene treatments could reach a few hundred thousand dollars — still exorbitantly expensive, but a significant improvement over the current multimillion-dollar price tag. While gene and cell therapies have the potential to transform medicine and patients’ lives, offering cures for previously intractable diseases like sickle cell, leukemia, or lymphoma, the lack of a sustainable pricing model in the U.S. means that access is limited. Spain’s decentralized model for manufacturing CAR-T therapy has sped up production times at a cost of one third of the U.S. price, and a similar model was launched in Brazil in 2024 that’s also set to lower CAR-T’s cost. Cell and gene therapies are revolutionary and lifesaving treatments, but only if patients can afford to access them.  — [Bloomberg, STAT News, Caring Cross]

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Patient Advocate Spotlight: Kaye Peterson
Background: 67-year-old retired librarian from Lebanon, Kentucky
Condition: Type 1 Diabetes and Polyneuropathy
Drug: Lispro ($639.59 / vial), Lantus ($649.75 / vial), Midodrine ($185.99). Kaye pays $35 per vial for Lispro and Lantus, and Midodrine is covered by her insurance. 

In her words: “Even with good insurance coverage, prescription drug prices are still ridiculously high for patients who need them. A minor change in my insurance could leave me with soaring out-of-pocket costs.” 

“I believe in lower prescription drug prices because I am way too tired to have to continue asking this question: How many people have to continue to die because they can’t afford their insulin and inhalers?” 

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