OAN Staff Avril Elfi
Tuesday, September 24, 2024 3:42 PM
At a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers questioned makers of popular weight-loss drugs including Ozempic and Wegobee, citing drug prices that Sen. Bernie Sanders described as “exorbitantly high.”
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Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fluagaard Jorgensen is scheduled to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by the independent senator from Vermont.
Sanders told reporters on Monday that the hearing would focus on “asking why Novo Nordisk continues to deceive the American people.”
“Most of their sales are in the U.S.,” Sanders said. “We're their cash cow.”
Sanders repeated similar comments during the hearing.
The prices of the drugs Ozempic and Wegoy are much higher in the United States than in other countries.
The committee said Novo Nordisk charges diabetics $969 a month for Ozempic, compared with $155 a month in Canada and $59 a month in Germany.
The committee found that Wegovy charges Americans $1,349 a month, compared with as low as $140 in Germany and $92 in the UK.
Jorgensen countered by shifting the blame onto the U.S. health care system, arguing that pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which are owned by insurers and charge a percentage of a drug's list price, frequently exclude lower-priced drugs from their offerings.
“In our experience, [that] “Products with lower list prices get less coverage,” the CEO said.
Jorgensen said PBMs and insurers don't invest in research and development to develop drugs, but companies that do have to negotiate prices with PBMs and insurers.
“That's absurd,” he added.
After Sanders assured him that the three major PBMs had agreed not to reduce access to Ozempic and Wegovi if Novo Nordisk significantly reduced costs, the executive said he was open to negotiations but still had concerns.
“We lowered the price of insulin and discontinued products last year,” Jorgensen said, “so we're a little nervous about how this process will go.”
The company announced last year that it would phase out and permanently stop selling its long-acting insulin Levemir in the United States by the end of the year, citing reduced patient access and other factors.
Popular weight-loss drugs known as GLP-1 agonists are often used by people with diabetes and obesity, and have seen a big increase in demand in the last year. But 54% of adults who have used GLP-1 drugs, including those with insurance, claim they still find it “difficult” to fit the cost into their budget. KFF The poll was released in May.
Meanwhile, a recent Yale University study suggests that these drugs could potentially be produced profitably at prices “significantly lower” than what Americans would pay.
Ahead of the hearing, Sanders said the demands on drug companies should be to “substantially reduce the price of their products” and not charge Americans more than residents of other countries.
In a statement released ahead of the hearing, the drug companies defended their pricing, saying they “understand how frustrating it can be that each country has its own health care system, but making individual and limited comparisons ignores this fundamental fact.”
The company also argued that even if it were to lower its prices, the majority of U.S. patients would not benefit from the price reductions.
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