As part of a push tolower drug costs for Americans, the Trump administration hasproposed requiring drugmakers to put the list price of theirproducts in advertisements. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Eli Lilly & Co. won't put the price of its prescriptiondrugs in television ads, as the Trump administration has called for pharmaceutical companies to do,but will instead offer patients a link to a website withinformation about prescription costs.

Starting Tuesday morning, the Indianapolis-based maker ofpopular diabetes treatments will start airingtelevision ads touting the website lillypricinginfo.com, along witha toll-free telephone number. The site will have information aboutdrug list prices, patient assistance programs and average patientcost for medicine.

The first ad will be for the injectable diabetes drug Trulicity,which costs $730 for a month's supply. Trulicity had estimatedsales of $3.19 billion last year, making it the company's biggestblockbuster.

Related: Listing drug prices on TV: Does it really benefitconsumers?

As part of a push to lower drug costs for Americans, the Trumpadministration has proposed requiring drugmakers to put the listprice of their products in advertisements. That would, theadministration has said, help pressure them into lowering the listprices that can factor into co-pays and other cost-sharing by somepatients.

“Consumers would have much more balanced information, andcompanies would have a very different set of incentives for settingtheir prices,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar saidlast year, touting the proposal.

Industry Disagrees

Lilly, along with the industry's lobby group in Washington, havedisagreed with that approach.

“We're not ruling that out long term,” Lilly Chief ExecutiveOfficer Dave Ricks said Monday on the sidelines of the J.P. MorganHealthcare Conference in San Francisco. “This is a first step. Wethink it's the right first step and we'll study that question andperhaps that could be in the mix in the future.”

Ricks said the company is seeking more data about how pricetransparency impacts patients' behavior and that ultimately, hedoesn't want to see people quitting treatments as a result of theprice disclosure.

After the White House proposed drug companies disclose prices inads, the lobbying group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturersof America, or PhRMA, said such a requirement could be a violationof the First Amendment because of restrictions on “compelledspeech.”

List prices are the cost of drugs before accounting for rebatesand insurance co-pays, and drugmakers have said they don'tnecessarily reflect what people actually pay. Critics of theindustry say list prices are relevant because many Americans haveco-insurance and high-deductible plans that force them to shouldera significant portion of a drug's price.

Lilly plans to expand the program to the psoriasis drug Taltzand breast cancer drug Verzenio by the end of February. Over thenext few months, the company will offer pricing disclosures on itssite for the rest of its drugs. Lilly will solicit feedback fromthe Trulicity ads to inform future pricing initiatives anddisclosures.

President Donald Trump has been especially vocal about drugpricing, even in recent days. “Drug makers and companies are notliving up to their commitments on pricing. Not being fair to theconsumer, or to our Country!,” he tweeted over the weekend.

— With assistance by Anna Edney

Read more:

• New bipartisan bill targets drug prices–andMylan
• Quick take: Key themes affecting pharma in2019
• Drugmakers caught between pressure from investors,regulators

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