Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
White House Bargaining With Lilly, Novo To Offer $149 Weight Loss Drugs
The Trump administration is negotiating a deal with weight-loss drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that would allow the lowest doses of some of their obesity drugs to be sold to consumers at $149 for a month鈥檚 supply via TrumpRx, according to people familiar with the matter. The deals would also result in Medicare and Medicaid covering the drugs for weight loss, the people said, which would be a boon to the companies. (Essley Whyte and Loftus, 11/4)
Novo Nordisk and Pfizer's multibillion-dollar fight over who gets to buy an anti-obesity biotech has morphed into a narrative argument over which acquisition would be most America First 鈥斅燼 framing with clear political implications. (Owens, 11/5)
On tariffs 鈥
US President Donald Trump announced a cut to fentanyl-related tariffs on imports from China and the continued freeze of some of his reciprocal levies on Chinese goods, formalizing key elements of the sweeping trade deal struck with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The moves, made in a pair of executive orders issued Tuesday, go into effect on Nov. 10. The fentanyl tariff rate will be halved from 20% to 10%, while Trump has also extended for a year a truce that saw him reduce his reciprocal tariff rate from 34% to 10%. (Wingrove, 11/4)
Siemens Healthineers AG expects the impact from tariffs to roughly double to 鈧400 million ($460 million) in fiscal 2026, according to Chief Financial Officer Jochen Schmitz. The German medical-technology company sees good prospects for business in the US, Schmitz said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Still, the manufacturer is managing costs tightly and can 鈥渢hink about potential value-add shifts鈥 to counter the import duties, he added. Tariff headwind was around 鈧200 million in fiscal 2025. (Eckl-Dorna and Mackenzie, 11/5)
This year, as President Trump threatened tariffs, nearly all of the wealthiest pharmaceutical companies have pledged to spend billions of dollars to build factories in the United States. Construction is underway in industry hubs like North Carolina on state-of-the-art plants that will produce blockbuster drugs. But the president鈥檚 drug-manufacturing renaissance in America is largely leaving out the production of generic medicines, which account for 90 percent of Americans鈥 prescriptions. (Robbins, 11/4)
