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Bernie Sanders has urged Denmark to take control of its most valuable company, Novo Nordisk, and force it to cut prices on popular weight loss and diabetes treatments Ozempic and Wegovy, taking his fight to lower drug prices outrageously high in the United States to the company’s door. as its profits soar amid ongoing struggles to satisfy the growing appetite for breakthrough drugs.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called on Danes to pressure Novo Nordisk to lower drug prices … [+]
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In a column published Monday in the Danish newspaper Politiken, Sen. Sanders, I-Vt., called on the Danish public to pressure the country’s largest business to lower prices for Ozempic and Wegovy in the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Sanders, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he admires Denmark’s health and welfare system and appeals to the deep-rooted Danish sense of social justice to help the American people do some thing about the obesity and diabetes epidemic we are facing. .
He described Novos Ozempic and Wegovy, which contain semaglutide and are licensed for diabetes and weight loss, respectively, as potential game-changers for people around the world, but said they may not benefit the millions of people who can’t afford it.
Ozempic is available in Denmark and some European countries at a fraction of the price it is in the U.S., Sanders said, claiming that Novo charges about 10 times more for Ozempic in the U.S. than elsewhere.
There is no reason for this discrepancy other than greed, Sanders said, adding that the difference is at odds with Novos’ stated moral ideals, claims of social responsibility and the fact that its major shareholder is a charitable foundation, not a billionaire or Wall Street investor. .
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The column isn’t the first time Sanders has targeted Novo over the prices of its popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs, nor is it the first time he’s focused on the problem of high prices in the United States. In March, Sanders called on the company to lower its prices to what Canada pays, where he said Ozempic’s out-of-pocket costs were less than a third of those in the US. He claimed that US prices had the potential to bankrupt Medicare. the American people and our entire health care system. In April, in his role as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sanders issued Novo a series of questions asking them to justify their drug prices, including costs and manufacturing, and said the group was conducting an investigation into the outrageously high prices. The stellar success of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy has quickly catapulted Novo from a strong player in pharmaceuticals to the upper echelons of the largest global companies. Today, it has a market capitalization of just under $600 billion today, another rare feature among global companies, as it is higher than the GDP of its home country by much more than around $375 billion at this time last year, about $257 billion in 2022 and $171 billion in 2021.
Versus
Speaking in early 2024, Novo Nordisk CFO Karsten Munk Knudsen said too much of the conversation is focused on cost and too little on value, and company executives have argued that US prices d’Ozempic are down 40% since 2018, according to the Telegraph. Knudsen pointed to semaglutide’s ability to control blood glucose, reduce weight and reduce cardiovascular risk, which are all major health conditions listed on Ozempic and Wegovy’s labels.
Big Number
4.6 billion dollars. That’s how much Medicare spent on Ozempic in 2022, making it the sixth best-selling drug in Medicare’s Part D plan, according to KFF. Costs add up quickly. The previous year, $2.6 billion was spent on Ozempic. If all type 2 diabetes likely to benefit from GLP-1 drugs were on them, the annual bill would reach about $41 billion, Bloomberg estimates.
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