Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, President and CEO of Novo Nordisk A/S NVO, is set to face tough questions from the U.S. lawmakers regarding the steep prices of the company’s diabetes and weight-loss drugs, including Ozempic and Wegovy.
The United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, September 24th.
Leading the charge is Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate committee, who has been outspoken about the high cost of these medicines.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Senate Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, have long been vocal about the exorbitant prices the pharmaceutical industry charges for prescription drugs in the U.S.
Bernie Sanders said the first question he would ask Novo Nordisk’s CEO at a Senate committee hearing is why the drugmaker charges up to 10 or 15 times more for Ozempic and Wegovy in the U.S. than other countries.
“This is absurd,” Sanders said in an interview late Tuesday. “It is clear that Novo Nordisk is ripping off the American people.”
Novo Nordisk is expected to defend the current prices, pointing to how most patients are covered by insurance and blaming pharmacy benefit managers for inflating drug prices through rebates.
Jørgensen is likely to highlight the extensive development costs of these drugs, which the company says exceeded $10 billion over three decades.
Novo Nordisk has invested over $30 billion in expanding its manufacturing capacity since early last year.
However, a Bloomberg analysis shows that Ozempic and Wegovy’s enormous sales, which are set to surpass $65 billion by the end of this year, undermine the company’s justification for the high prices.
After accounting for inflation, that figure would surpass the $68 billion Novo had invested in all research and development since the mid-1990s when the company began focusing on this class of drugs.
According to some analysts, Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic and several other well-known medications might be included in Medicare’s negotiated prescription drug prices.
Price Action: NVO stock is down 3.10% at $123.56 at the last check Monday.
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