This category assesses how each company improves the affordability of its medicines and vaccines for underserved populations. We considered pricing strategies, the use of voluntary licensing or generics partnerships, patient assistance programs and donation initiatives.
Lilly is making progress in product access and affordability, particularly for insulin, through price reductions, manufacturing partnerships, and voluntary licensing. However, its strategy is narrower than that of some peers who use comprehensive tiered pricing and nonexclusive voluntary licensing agreements. While Lilly does not yet offer comprehensive tiered pricing across its full portfolio or participate in initiatives like the Medicines Patent Pool, its targeted moves (insulin price cuts, local production deals and substantial drug donation programs) demonstrate a growing commitment to affordability. Going forward, expanding such measures to more products and countries—and aligning prices with ability to pay—will be crucial for Lilly to fully match competitors’ breadth of access strategies. Exploring innovative access programs like those implemented by GSK and Novartis could also significantly improve Lilly's affordability efforts.
Expanding Beyond Insulin: While Lilly has taken significant steps to improve insulin affordability through price reductions and manufacturing partnerships, its approach remains more targeted compared with that of peers with broad affordability strategies. Expanding tiered pricing, voluntary licensing, and affordability measures to other cardiometabolic treatments would enhance its global access impact.
Sustainable Affordability Models: Peers like GSK and Novartis leverage inclusive business models such as subscription-based pricing and no-profit medicine portfolios to ensure long-term affordability. Lilly has an opportunity to integrate similar models—beyond donations and one-off price reductions—to make pricing structures more predictable, sustainable, and scalable across diverse markets.
Leveraging Strategic Partnerships: Many industry leaders collaborate with initiatives like the Medicines Patent Pool or establish nonexclusive voluntary licensing agreements to scale impact. While Lilly has engaged in targeted affordability partnerships, expanding its participation in global access platforms and collaborative licensing agreements would help accelerate equitable access across multiple product categories and regions.
GSK’s tiered pricing and voluntary licensing: GSK offers tiered pricing for many vaccines and medicines, ensuring lower prices in low-income countries. It also uses voluntary licensing agreements, allowing generic manufacturers to produce and distribute its products in LMICs, increasing affordability and access.
Sanofi’s Impact program: Sanofi’s Impact program provides a portfolio of 30 essential medicines at no profit in 40 low-income countries, demonstrating a commitment to sustainable access and affordability for a wide range of diseases.
Novartis’s innovative access programs: Novartis combines various approaches, including tiered pricing with its Novartis Access program, drug donations for diseases such as leprosy, and voluntary licensing for its cancer drug nilotinib, to address affordability for a range of diseases in LMICs.
How can Lilly establish a formal tiered pricing policy across its portfolio for lower-income countries? Peers like GSK have long-standing frameworks to price medicines affordably in poor markets. Could Lilly lead the industry by implementing a comprehensive tiered pricing strategy for its entire portfolio in LMICs, not just for select products?
How can Lilly expand the scale of its affordable offerings? Sanofi’s Impact model and Novartis’s $1 portfolio cover dozens of medicines. Lilly might consider bundling its diabetes and oncology drugs into an “access package” for health ministries or NGOs at minimal profit—a bold move that could reach far more patients.
Where might Lilly place “big bets” to ensure scalable access solutions across its portfolio?