After a tweet from a fake corporate account last week claimed Eli Lilly would give insulin away for free, the drugmaker’s chief executive officer acknowledged the need to do a better job of widening access to the life-saving diabetes treatment and change perceptions of its existing efforts to do so.
“It probably highlights that we have more work to do to bring down the cost of insulin for more people,” David Ricks said at the STAT Summit, where he made his first public remarks since the episode erupted. He added Lilly attempted to get the tweet taken down quickly, but the company found it difficult to secure cooperation from Twitter, which is in turmoil after Elon Musk purchased the company and cut staff.
“It’s disappointing to our business, because reliable information is core to who we are. People count on us for the right information for their health decisions. That includes affordability,” Ricks continued. “In this case, it was fake. 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.”
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