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Yahoo Finance Health Care Reporter Anjalee Khemlani reports on this first-of-its kind platform—and what access would look like.
For more information and the latest market actions, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Eli Lilly (LLY), maker of the diabetes and weight loss drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro, has introduced a direct-to-consumer website, which helps patients locate prescribers and pharmaceutical solutions. Through the site, patients will be able to obtain medication for obesity, diabetes, and migraine. directly from Eli Lilly and delivered to their homes through Eversara and TruePill.
Anjalee Khemlani, a healthcare reporter at Yahoo Finance, reports on this unique platform and what it would be like to access it.
For more information and the latest market actions, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Editor’s note: This article was written by Eyek Ntekim
JULIE HYMAN: Eli Lilly, the maker of the diabetes and weight loss drug Mounjaro, has beefed up its marketing efforts with a new direct-to-consumer website. The announcement sent the stock up today, as the company announces, or in fact, it is down right now, as the company says it will make it easier for patients to prescribe medications.
Here with more is Anjalee Khemlani. This is quite unusual, is it not, for a drug maker itself to liaise directly with consumers?
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: There are a lot of hypotheses as to why Lilly might do that. On the one hand, if you look at what the ad implies, it’s all about drugs for obesity, diabetes, and migraine. These are readily available medications or spaces. The most in-demand, of course, along with obesity and diabetes, Mounjaro and Zepbound.
So it’s attractive because it gives Lilly the opportunity to interact more with consumers, especially money consumers, because the latter two, as we know, have had issues with insurance coverage. What Lilly offers here is direct promotion and home delivery through Eversana and Truepill. Truepill, if you recall, had some skirmishes with the law when it was involved in the Adderall brain prescription fiasco in 2022, but it’s obviously kind of a recovery procedure for them.
And this can only be achieved in the United States at the moment. So that opens the door to more engagement. And it will be attractive to see how they can develop. They apply automatic coupons or savings cards to those who qualify. This is a piece we saw on Amazon Pharmacy not too long ago. And we also know that they’re looking to expand. They told us in a statement that the ecosystem will continue to evolve as new service providers are added. Therefore, it is not imaginable; It’s possibly more than just those two that they can integrate to really expand their reach.
JOSH LIPTON: Anjalee, it’s not like there’s any kind of challenge with those LPG-1s. So why now?
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: yes, that’s an attractive question. You’re right, that’s not the case. Obviously, they have more demands than they can handle. And we know that paying in money is one of the main tactics to succeed with those customers, especially on the obesity front, which is why we’ve noticed something of an uncontrollable challenge with fakes, as noted with Ozempic, their competitor, as well as with use in medispas, right?We have noticed that many pharmacies use compound products for off-label use.
And so I think it’s a way for Lilly to grab him and hug him. They more or less indicated that in an open letter today saying, quote, that “Lilly opposes the use of its weight-loss drugs for cosmetic purposes: Mounjaro and Zepbound are particularly referred to or indicated for the treatment of serious ailments and are not recommended or deserve to be used for cosmetic weight loss.
So I think they’re trying to fix this when they’ve already sued a number of those hot tubs, who were also promoting counterfeits or whatever, Novo Nordisk. So I think that’s just one way that corporations have to deal with this.
JOSH LIPTON: Anjalee, thank you very much. Good thing.