STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about a plan to lower Medicare drug prices, a Lilly obesity drug, and more — SkimNews
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- Trump administration published a final rule creating the GLOBE (Global Benchmark for Efficient Drug Pricing) pilot to tie Medicare payments for physician-administered drugs to prices in other wealthy countries, but it applies to only four companies and delivers 96% less savings than the initial proposal.
- GLOBE is one of two mandatory pilot programs in President Trump's most-favored nation pricing push; the other pilot, called GUARD, remains in the proposed stage.
- Eli Lilly reported that combining its GLP-1 drug Zepbound with amylin-targeting eloralintide produced 23.3% weight loss at the highest dose after 48 weeks in a mid-stage study of patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
- The combination outperformed Zepbound alone (14.8% weight loss) and eloralintide alone (11.1%), though high discontinuation rates may raise tolerability concerns.
- The final rule's narrow scope—only four companies—represents a steep scaling-back from the original ambition of the most-favored nation pricing policy.
Why it matters: The GLOBE pilot's 96% reduction in projected savings from its initial proposal means Trump's signature drug-pricing push delivers far less fiscal relief than promised, with only four companies affected. Separately, Lilly's combination data points to a potential path to stronger weight loss than Zepbound alone—contingent on solving the tolerability problem that drove high dropout rates.
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