# Eli Lilly American pharmaceutical giant founded in Indianapolis in 1876 by Colonel Eli Lilly, a Union Army veteran. In November 2025 it became the **first healthcare company in history to reach a $1 trillion market value** — only the second non-tech U.S. company to do so, after Berkshire Hathaway — on the strength of its GLP-1 blockbusters Mounjaro (diabetes) and Zepbound (weight loss). For this KB it matters in three ways: as a charter member of the insulin pricing cartel, as the corporate home of [[Alex Azar]] before his HHS turn, and as a primary dealmaker in the Trump administration's most-favored-nation pricing theater. ## Corporate Arc Lilly's history tracks the whole arc of American pharma: it commercialized the first insulin in 1923 (licensed from the University of Toronto researchers who had sold the patent for $1 so it would stay affordable — an irony central to everything that followed), launched Prozac in 1987, and paid what was then one of the largest corporate criminal fines in U.S. history ($1.4 billion, 2009) for illegally marketing the antipsychotic Zyprexa off-label. ## The Insulin Record Between roughly 2012 and 2017 — the years [[Alex Azar]] ran Lilly USA, its largest affiliate — the list price of Humalog roughly doubled, from about $123 to $255 per vial, moving in near-lockstep with [[Novo Nordisk]] and [[Sanofi]] in what critics and class-action plaintiffs called an insulin cartel. The political bill came due in stages: Azar's 2017 HHS nomination made Lilly's pricing a national story; the [[Inflation Reduction Act]] capped Medicare insulin copays at $35 in 2022; and in March 2023, facing litigation and the cap's political momentum, Lilly announced 70% list-price cuts on its main insulins and a $35 out-of-pocket cap of its own. Its co-marketed diabetes drug Jardiance was also among the first ten drugs selected for Medicare price negotiation under the IRA. ## The GLP-1 Era and the Trump Deals The tirzepatide franchise (Mounjaro/Zepbound) transformed Lilly into the world's most valuable drugmaker — Mounjaro alone did $6.5 billion in Q3 2025, up 109% year-over-year. In November 2025, [[Donald Trump]] announced bilateral deals with Lilly and [[Novo Nordisk]]: GLP-1 prices of $245/month for Medicare and Medicaid, average prices around $346/month through the new TrumpRx platform launching in 2026, most-favored-nation pricing pledges on new drugs, and at least $27 billion in announced U.S. manufacturing investment. The deals exemplify the pattern documented at [[Most-Favored-Nation Drug Pricing Deals]]: negotiated price theater with presidential branding, struck while the industry's record lobbying spend continued — and while Lilly's market cap crossed $1 trillion the same month. ## Connections - [[Alex Azar]] — President of Lilly USA 2012–2017; then HHS Secretary - [[Big Pharma]] — Hub page; insulin cartel and MFN-deal analysis - [[Inflation Reduction Act]] — The $35 insulin cap and Medicare negotiation - [[Donald Trump]] — November 2025 GLP-1 pricing deal / TrumpRx - [[Operation Warp Speed]] — Lilly produced COVID antibody therapeutics under the same emergency apparatus ## See also - [[Insulin and the Politics of Drug Pricing]] — a century-old drug priced as a luxury, and the fight over capping it