(Reuters) -Novo Nordisk said on Tuesday it would cut U.S. list prices for several insulin drugs by up to 75% next year, joining rival Eli Lilly as drugmakers come under pressure for high prices of the life-sustaining treatment.
The moves follow President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act last year that capped insulin prices for Medicare recipients at $35 per month, but that does not extend to patients without insurance.
Novo will reduce the list price of its NovoLog insulin by 75%, and for Novolin and Levemir by 65%. The Danish drugmaker said the financial impact of the move was uncertain.
The company also said it would reduce the list price of unbranded insulin products to match lowered price of respective branded insulin products.
Eli Lilly and Co said earlier this month that it would cut the list prices for its most commonly prescribed insulin products by 70% from the fourth quarter of this year.
“I think it is a relatively natural consequence of what we have seen their competitor Eli Lilly do. We know there has been political pressure on this issue in general, it is a focus area in the U.S., especially for uninsured patients,” Jyske Markets analyst Henrik Hallengreen Laustsen told Reuters.
Eli Lilly, along with Sanofi and Novo, make up 90% of the U.S. market for insulin.
Around 8.4 million of the 37 million people in the United States with diabetes use insulin, according to the American Diabetes Association.
(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija in Bengaluru and Nikolaj Skydsgaard in Copenhagen; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Shilpi Majumdar)
