Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, President and CEO of Novo Nordisk A/S NVO, is about to face robust questions from the U.S. lawmakers relating to the steep costs of the corporate’s diabetes and weight-loss medicine, together with Ozempic and Wegovy.
The USA Senate Committee on Well being, Schooling, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, September twenty fourth.
Main the cost is Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate committee, who has been outspoken in regards to the excessive value of those medicines.
Additionally Learn: Novo Nordisk Does Not Function As Drug Cartel, CEO Defends US Pricing Of Ozempic Towards Criticism Over Excessive Drug Costs.
The President of the USA, Joe Biden, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Senate Chairman of the Well being, Schooling, Labor, and Pensions Committee, have lengthy been vocal in regards to the exorbitant costs the pharmaceutical trade fees for pharmaceuticals within the U.S.
Bernie Sanders said the primary query he would ask Novo Nordisk’s CEO at a Senate committee listening to is why the drugmaker fees as much as 10 or 15 instances extra for Ozempic and Wegovy within the U.S. than different nations.
“That is absurd,” Sanders stated in an interview late Tuesday. “It’s clear that Novo Nordisk is ripping off the American individuals.”
Novo Nordisk is anticipated to defend the present costs, pointing to how most sufferers are coated by insurance coverage and blaming pharmacy profit managers for inflating drug costs by way of rebates.
Jørgensen is prone to spotlight the in depth improvement prices of those medicine, which the corporate says exceeded $10 billion over three a long time.
Novo Nordisk has invested over $30 billion in increasing its manufacturing capability since early final yr.
Nonetheless, a Bloomberg analysis exhibits that Ozempic and Wegovy’s huge gross sales, that are set to surpass $65 billion by the top of this yr, undermine the corporate’s justification for the excessive costs.
After accounting for inflation, that determine would surpass the $68 billion Novo had invested in all analysis and improvement because the mid-Nineties when the corporate started specializing in this class of medicine.
In accordance with some analysts, Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic and a number of other different well-known medicines is perhaps included in Medicare’s negotiated prescription drug costs.
Worth Motion: NVO inventory is down 3.10% at $123.56 on the final verify Monday.
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