Club holding Eli Lilly (LLY) expects U.S. health officials to make insurance reimbursement for Alzheimer’s drugs easier to obtain, a policy change that, in theory, would help them become more commercially successful. It would be a boon to Lilly for sure, which has a treatment for the disease in trials. But we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves before the company releases its latest Alzheimer’s trial data. In an interview with Reuters , Eli Lilly executive Derek Asay said the drugmaker believes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will eventually drop its more-stringent insurance coverage rules for a nascent class of Alzheimer’s drugs that target the protein amyloid. Broad reimbursement allowed by CMS, which administers government-backed senior care, is seen as important for the expensive treatments to be accessible to patients. Lilly is expected to release phase three trial data on its latest anti-amyloid therapy, known as donanemab, by the end of June. It will likely need full approval to come to market, possibly in early 2024, based on prior Food and Drug Administration criteria . “We believe that [CMS] will provide what we would call outright coverage like they do for every other FDA-approved medication,” Asay, who oversees Eli Lilly’s relationship with the agency, told Reuters. Lilly shares climbed more than 2% on Friday, setting a new all-time intraday high of over $383 each, in an otherwise down day on Wall Street. The stock has soared more than 30% in the past 12 months. LLY 1Y mountain Shares of Eli Lilly over the past 12 months. CMS’ current policy for anti-amyloid Alzheimer’s drugs is two-fold. For those approved under the Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated approval pathway, patients need to also be participating in a clinical trial to obtain CMS coverage. For those with full FDA approval, the agency will pay if patients enroll in a registry that collects data on effectiveness and safety. The FDA issued accelerated approval to…
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