The Trump administration is close to striking a deal with pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to offer some of their obesity drugs to consumers for $149 a month, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.
The agreement would also clear the way for Medicare to cover drugs for certain beneficiaries. It’s a move that could expand the market for drugs such as Wegovy, Zepbound and Mounjaro, which have already proven widely popular despite their high prices. The price consumers pay depends on insurance and discounts, but the list price for the drug is roughly between $1,000 and $1,350.
President Donald Trump is expected to announce a deal as early as Thursday, but people familiar with the negotiations cautioned that the deal is not finalized and officials are still working out key policy details.
“Discussion of a deal that has not been officially announced by the administration should be considered speculation,” White House press secretary Khushi Desai said in a statement. Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt declined to confirm the planned announcement Tuesday, but said a deal to reduce the cost of obesity drugs “is something the administration is engaging with and investigating.”
Negotiations over obesity drugs from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk represent perhaps the most important element of the White House’s broader effort to lower drug prices through individual deals with drug manufacturers.
The “Most Favored Nation” plan has so far resulted in agreements with Pfizer, AstraZeneca and other companies to sell certain products directly to consumers at discounted prices. This is often the price of relief from the threat of targeted tariffs. Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk already offer weight-loss drugs at discounted prices directly to consumers who pay cash.
But Trump has been particularly obsessed with securing deals for the GLP-1 drug, whose popularity has exploded in recent years to help with weight loss and a variety of chronic conditions. The president has called it a ‘fat loss drug’ both publicly and privately.
At a separate event highlighting drug price negotiations in mid-October, President Trump said, “You will pay about $150 instead of $1,300” for GLP-1 drugs, and Mehmet Oz, director of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, intervened and emphasized that negotiations are still ongoing.
Endpoint News First reported The deal is getting closer to the finish line.
It’s unclear which company’s drug will sell for $149 or whether access to consumers will be limited. The deal involves a pilot program CMS is in the final stages of development aimed at capping the cost of obesity drugs for some Medicare beneficiaries, one of the people familiar with the negotiations said.
“We’ve been talking to the Trump administration for a long time, and our goal is exactly the same: to make it affordable and accessible to as many people as possible,” Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar told CNN Wednesday morning after the company reported its quarterly earnings. “I hope we can work out solutions in a place that is more accessible than it is now.”
Doustdar noted that negotiations were ongoing and declined to comment on specific details. He is the company’s Cash payment Ozempic and Wegovy’s options ($499 per month for non-insured patients) are “our biggest growing channels right now.” Lily also accepts cash payments. options For Zepbound, a weight-loss drug that starts at $349 per month.
Doustdar added that weight loss drugs are increasingly similar to the consumer market. It’s another product driven by new product updates versus the iPhone, rather than the more traditional pharmaceutical markets like insulin, where patients find the version that’s right for them and typically get insurance.
“In the field of obesity treatment, we see patients, our customers, being excited about the next best option,” Doustdar said.
The expected deals with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk come after years of bickering on both sides of the issue over whether Medicare and Medicaid should cover expensive drugs. Last year, the Biden administration formally proposed expanding coverage of them, but the plan was not finalized before President Trump took office. The Trump administration said in April it would kill the proposal, but left the door open to considering future policy options for drug coverage.
Additionally, Ozempic and Wegovy, among others, were selected for a second round of Medicare drug pricing negotiations in January, which is expected to result in cost savings for the program and enrollees based on drug coverage.
Trump’s current health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has fiercely opposed efforts to make the drug more accessible, telling Fox News ahead of the November election that Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic, is “thinking about selling this drug to the American people because we’re so stupid and addicted to drugs.” But since joining the administration, he has taken a much more accepting tone, expressing openness to patients using it if prior efforts to improve their health fail.
