Lilly Sells Zepbound Vials at Lower Cost

So patients take a syringe, put it into the vial, and you sort of draw up the liquid. Which a lot of people, though, are used to now because of the popularity of these knockoff drugs that we've talked about before. Those are all the single use vials or the multi-use files. And so patients are really used to that now. So what I mean, just really have to do this or why are they doing it? What strategy here? So this is and I think we've probably talked about this on the show at some point to the fact that Lilly's production problems are really stemming from the pens. The auto injector devices that are used are really complex to manufacture. And so that's been bottlenecking supply. So by offering their weight loss drugs in vials, they can circumvent those issues with the with the making of the pens. What about the direct to consumer angle here? Because I don't think I've ever been able to get a prescription directly from a manufacturer. There's always a middle person as a pharmacy, whether it's an online pharmacy or the old fashioned kind of pharmacy that you go to. Is this a new way for patients to actually get a medication from a producer? Yeah, it's interesting because Lilly Direct, which they launched earlier this year, it's still partnered with various telehealth companies and online pharmacies that like Amazon Pharmacy, for example, that will just send the medications directly to your house. So Lilly isn't the one like it's not Eli Lilly doctors that are writing the prescriptions. It's not an independent Eli Lilly Pharmacy, but they've built up this platform that directs patients to their website. They said that that can help, you know, with savings in terms of applying savings coupons and things like that. And then when it comes to these vials, they have it's cash pay only. So patients are not able to use insurance with these vials. And it also goes through Lilly dry. What is demand for this drug outside of insurance? I mean, people are really paying for this drug. So two bucks a month if you don't have insurance, these, you know, $400 a month right into the pharmacy on the east side or the Upper West Side, you know? Yeah. I mean, why? What do you see? I'm just saying. Yeah. It's a pretty popular drug for people who just want to lose weight. Right. And all these compounding drugs that have gotten so popular that we've mentioned, those are all cash, but you can't use insurance for those drugs. So that market has really been growing. You bring up an interesting point, though, which is, I mean, a little bit niche because it's so expensive. I mean, we're talking Manhattan here. Correct. You know, and it's and it's not necessarily, you know, what? The drug was developed for Madison of use, as you spoken to us at length of the past couple of years about this. But are there folks out there who who are not getting this covered by insurance, a significant number of them, and they're having to pay cash? Yeah, I mean, the insurance coverage is still quite spotty across the U.S. And for people who do figure out, okay, this is worth it for me, I need this for my health, they make you know, they make those decisions, but it's still really hard to get this covered. And that was one of the reasons why Lilly is launching these vials, especially, they said, for Medicare patients, because Medicare does not cover weight loss drugs at all. And so they said and Medicare patients also can't access savings coupons that Lilly offers. So they were like having these vials options is something for Medicare patients that is at least a little more accessible. It sounds like to me, to Madison that it's something that's going to help Eli Lilly's bottom line, which has gotten, you know, messed up because of the problems with the production of the the the injector pens. But at the same time, it does sounds like it still expensive, but does make it a little bit more accessible to folks. Yes, it definitely makes it more accessible. And from a couple of the patients that I talked to this morning, they were really excited about this. One of the patients that I've interviewed before who kind of started this whole campaign earlier this year called released the vials to get Lilly to do this. He was so excited about it and he was like, I really thought that they never would actually do this, or at least they would launch the vials and they would still be exorbitantly expensive. And so he was like, to me, this comes off as a good thing. The thing is, though, just reading through some of the analyst notes and in conversations today after this news came out for Lilly, it doesn't really affect the net prices in the long term, even though it seems like a discount. But they've also raised the price of one of their savings coupons. So that kind of offsets each other. And in terms of like the revenues that Lilly is collecting from ZAP about doing this doesn't actually have a negative impact on their bottom line.