In his first ever public comment in retaliation to a tweet flap sparked fury over increased insulin prices in the United States, Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks sided with his company’s pricing strategy—but also expressed it could be lower.
About the outraged netizens on Twitter, Ricks said, “It probably highlights that we have more work to do to bring down the cost of insulin for more people.”
The comments regarding the false tweet were made at an event held by Stat News this week. However, the company did not yet respond to Ars’ request for more information about what strategy the company will undertake to lower insulin prices.
The CEO’s remarks were made just days after a false tweet from a verified imposter account claiming to be Eli Lilly tweeted: “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.”
The tweet quickly got thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets before Eli Lilly reached out to Twitter to remove it. As per a report from The Washington Post, there was chaos and confusion within Eli Lilly as officials hastened to contact Twitter staff but were bereft for a response for hours. Ricks, however, expressed the company’s struggle to get the tweet removed and was quite disappointed by the late response.
He said, “It misled people and we wanted to get that corrected quickly. It probably didn’t happen quickly enough to our liking. And it demonstrates some of the challenges on that platform.”
The fake tweet up for many hours—and other imposter Eli Lilly accounts piled on. The real company quickly jumped into the matter, and tweeted from its verified account: “We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad.” But it did little to lessen the rage, with Twitter users replying: “Apologize to diabetics for price gouging,” and “Why don’t you make affordable insulin instead of apologizing?”
The Twitter outburst stems from withheld frustration with US drug pricing, which is peculiarly high, especially for insulin, which is a relatively cheap drug to prepare. Many diabetic patients in the United States have to pay bills worth hundreds of dollars for just a few vials a month. A recent study found that approximately 1.3 million Americans ration their insulin.
