Who’s Really Keeping Ozempic and Wegovy Prices So High?

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- On Tuesday, congressional leaders spent two hours taking to task Novo Nordisk Chief Executive Officer Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen over the high price of the company’s diabetes and obesity drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. Now the question is whether those prices will change.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate health committee, focused his sights not only on Novo Nordisk, but on the broader forces that drive up US health care costs. Even so, it’s hard to imagine any quick way to improve access and affordability for these drugs.

The hearings come amid new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention illustrating the intractability of the obesity epidemic in the US. Despite widespread attention to the problem, rates of obesity haven’t significantly budged in the last several years, with over 40% of the population considered obese.

Obesity Rate between August 2022 and August 2023

The prospect of 40% of the US population taking obesity drugs has everyone worried about the costs for public and private insurers. Novo’s Wegovy carries a list price of $1,349 per month. The volume of demand is weighing on insurers, even with discounts — and even amid shortages that mean not every patient can fill his or her prescription. It has pushed desperate patients into the gray market for compounded versions of obesity drugs, which are cheaper and more plentiful, but lack any assurances of safety or efficacy.

That situation is what brought Jørgensen before the Senate committee this week. Yet Senate hearings on drug pricing haven’t always offered much relief for American health care consumers. Rather, they often serve to illuminate the convoluted nature of drug pricing in the US. Senators’ line of questioning habitually makes clear that even well-briefed congressional leaders struggle to grasp the flow of money in and out of various players’ pockets.