Eli Lilly CEO says Medicare coverage of obesity drugs could ‘change the game’ for upcoming pill launch

Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks on Friday said upcoming Medicare coverage of obesity drugs could be a major catalyst for the rollout of the company’s closely watched experimental weight loss pill, orforglipron.

In an exclusive interview with CNBC, Ricks said Lilly expects to have Medicare coverage for the treatment “immediately following that launch, and that will change the game a bit too.” 

He said that’s because many patients are currently paying in cash for competitor Novo Nordisk‘s GLP-1 pill for obesity. That launched earlier this month and is off to a strong start, even with spotty insurance coverage.

Ricks said he noticed that nearly all of the early adopters of Novo’s Wegovy pill are new to GLP-1 treatments rather than users of existing injections, so “it’s expansive, it’s reaching more patients and that’s great.” 

He added that Lilly is confident in its pill’s ability to compete and is preparing for a “full launch” in the second quarter. The rollout is set to coincide with Medicare starting to cover obesity medicines for the first time later this year under drug pricing deals Lilly and Novo struck with President Donald Trump in November. 

That government coverage will bring the price point of pills even lower in the second half of the year, Ricks said. Certain Medicare patients will pay a copay of $50 per month for all approved uses of injectable and oral GLP-1 drugs, including diabetes and obesity treatment.

“That opens up things pretty wide, and we’ll see where we can go from there,” Ricks said. 

Medicare coverage of obesity treatments is a long-awaited move that some health experts say could broaden the market for the medicines and spur more private insurers to cover them. Ricks estimates that 20 million to 30 million Medicare beneficiaries who are suffering from obesity and related health conditions could be eligible for GLP-1 treatments, so coverage is a “big multiplier on the eligible pool.”

Ricks acknowledged that under the drug pricing deal, there will be “a step down in pricing” early this year. The agreements involve drugmakers voluntarily offering their medications for less, including selling their existing treatments to Medicaid patients at the lowest prices abroad, and guaranteeing that so-called most-favored nation pricing for new medicines.

But Ricks said volume growth of Lilly’s drugs “will ramp on the back half of the year.’ 

“We think that’s a positive balance for us, but time will tell,” he said, adding that it will be based on uptake of the treatments among Medicare patients and the company’s share of that adoption. 

Lilly will share more details on the financial impact of the deal when it posts its fourth-quarter earnings and 2026 guidance next week, he said. 

The price agreements include commitments to launch drugs at discounted cash-pay prices on Trump’s direct-to-consumer platform, TrumpRx. That site, which was expected to launch in January, is not yet live.

Ricks said Lilly was the first drugmaker to sell obesity treatments directly to patients through the company’s platform, LillyDirect, and TrumpRx is “taking that and expanding it across the industry” to other medicines.

“We’re all for that,” he said.