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U.S. weight-loss drug prices exceed those in other

developed

countries

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Drugmakers say they support fairer cost-sharing across

countries

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Some 40% of Americans estimated to have obesity

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Executive order to focus on drugs with largest price

disparities, expenditures

By Deena Beasley

May 12 (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Monday

singled out powerful new weight-loss drugs including Wegovy and

Zepbound as targets in its push to lower prescription drug

prices.

President Donald Trump's executive order demands that

drugmakers cut prices on their products in the coming months to

hew more closely to what they charge in other developed

countries, or face new regulations and enforcement actions, from

export restrictions to tariffs.

At the signing ceremony, Trump described a conversation with

a businessman friend who lamented how much more expensive

weight-loss treatments are in the United States.

"'I'm in London, and I just paid for this damn fat drug I

take,'" Trump quoted the man as saying. "'I just paid $88 and in

New York I paid $1,300. What the hell is going on? ... It's the

same box made in the same plant by the same company.'" He didn't

name the medicine.

Injected weight-loss drugs Wegovy, from Novo Nordisk

, and Eli Lilly's ( LLY ) Zepbound have U.S. list

prices of over $1,000 a month. For some patients, much of that

cost is covered by health insurance. For those without coverage,

both Novo and Lilly recently began selling their drugs directly

to U.S. consumers at a cash price of $499 a month.

But with 40% of Americans estimated to have obesity, U.S.

politicians and healthcare experts have urged both companies to

make the treatments more affordable.

A White House official told reporters on Monday that Trump's

executive order will have "a particular focus on drugs where

there is the largest disparities and the largest expenditures."

"It would be fair to expect that GLP-1s, given that they hit

both of those categories, will be a focus," the official said,

referring to the class of drugs for weight loss that Wegovy and

Zepbound, as well as related diabetes medicines Ozempic and

Mounjaro, belong to.

"There will be an expectation that those prices should come

down, and then if they don't, that we will be looking at our

various policy levers that can be used to force those prices

down."

Lilly on Monday said it agreed that costs for breakthrough

medicines should be shared more fairly across developed

countries. But the Indianapolis-based drugmaker said that could

only happen if intermediaries within the U.S. healthcare system,

such as pharmacy benefit managers, take a smaller share of sales

transactions.

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk said it agrees "that Americans

need more access to affordable medication, and we will continue

to engage with policymakers."

Countries where health insurance is mainly provided by the

government often negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical

companies. In Japan, for instance, the monthly price for a 10

milligram Zepbound injection pen is $61.68.

The trade-off is that some drugs are not covered under the

government-run plans. In the UK, access to the new obesity drugs

within the National Health Service is very limited, while

Germany's health plan does not cover the medications for weight

loss.

"These drug pricing issues resonate for a lot of people on

GLP-1s," said Benedic Ippolito, a senior fellow in economic

policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Many U.S. patients had also come to rely on much cheaper

copycat versions of GLP-1s made by compounding pharmacies, a

practice that will soon come to an end under a crackdown by the

Food and Drug Administration now that the brand name medicines

are no longer in shortage.