Eli Lilly Is Capping Insulin Prices, And People Think The Prank From Rollout Of Elon Musk's Paid 'Blue Checks' Is Behind It

On November 10th last year, prankster Sean Morrow spent $8 on a blue "verified" checkmark to impersonate the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, best known for selling insulin. The prankster said that insulin, which Eli Lilly once priced at $275 per vial, was now "free."

Nearly four months later, the real Eli Lilly has announced that it will be capping the cost of an individual vial of insulin at $35. The question now is, did Elon Musk inadvertently set in motion a series of actions that made it so working people could afford life-saving medication?

The Eli Lilly prank came at a time when Musk had introduced the "paid checkmark" system, which allowed anyone to spend $8 to get a verification badge on Twitter. This opened the door for tons of hijinks, as anyone with $8 was able to make a convincing parody of a notable public figure or company.

In particular, the Eli Lilly prank was by far the most notable, as it was rumored the tweet caused the company's stock to plummet the following day while employees of the company scrambled to control the damage. Now that Eli Lilly has capped the cost of its insulin at $35 a vial, some Twitter users are celebrating the prank as the "most important troll job of all time."

While it's possible there is some truth to these claims, there are plenty of other factors that probably factored more heavily into Eli Lilly's decision to cap the price of insulin. As reported by NBC News, the move puts Eli Lilly in line with the Inflation Reduction Act, and politicians and advocacy groups have been pressuring drug companies to make insulin affordable for years.

Eli Lilly's CEO David Ricks said, "The decision came as a result of conversations between the company and members of Congress about the cost of the medication," NBC News reported.

As for whether Sean Morrow's prank Eli Lilly tweet directly influenced the company's decision to cap insulin prices, there certainly seems to be a correlation between the two events, but there's no evidence supporting that the former caused the latter. However, for those who see Eli Lilly's decision as a win, the situation sure looks like a prime example of the power of memeing.