In This Story
The stocks of pharmaceutical giants Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly both took a hit Tuesday morning after President Joe Biden called on the drug makers to cut the prices of their blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs.
Novo Nordisk stock fell 3% during Tuesday morning trading, to about $140 per share. Eli Lilly shares fell 3.2%, to about $884.
In an op-ed published in USA Today, Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized the high prices Novo Nordisk and other pharmaceutical companies charge Americans for weight loss drugs known as GLP-1 treatments. Novo Nordisk produces the the popular Ozempic and Wegovy brands, and Eli Lilly is the maker of Mounjaro and Zepbound.
Skyrocketing sales of this class of drugs have transformed Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk into the most valuable pharmaceutical companies in the world.
“If Novo Nordisk and other pharmaceutical companies refuse to substantially lower prescription drug prices in our country and end their greed, we will do everything within our power to end it for them,” Biden and Sanders wrote. “Novo Nordisk must substantially reduce the price of Ozempic and Wegovy.”
The op-ed comes after Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen agreed to testify in September before the Senate’s health committee to address the pharma giant’s high U.S. prices. Jørgensen agreed to testify just days after after Sanders, chairman of Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), called a vote to subpoena a Novo Nordisk executive.
In April, the HELP committee launched an investigation into the high prices the company charges for its blockbuster drugs.
Sanders said in June that the committee’s investigation found that the net cost of Ozempic in the U.S. is about $600 a month, well above the drug’s list price in other countries. Ozempic in Germany costs just $59 for a month’s supply. The net price of Wegovy in the U.S. is $809, while it goes for $92 in the United Kingdom.
“We are disappointed that a very difficult and complex problem is being oversimplified and mischaracterized for political purposes,” a Novo Nordisk spokesperson told Quartz in an emailed statement. “Each country has its own healthcare system and making isolated and limited comparisons ignores this fundamental concern.”
The final price patients pay for these medications varies by patient and can depend on insurance coverage.
A Morgan Stanley survey of GLP-1 drug patients found that about two-third of respondents said their medication is fully covered by insurance. Patients who paid out-of-pocket said their average monthly payment was $196.
“Comparing list prices in the United States to other countries ignores patient affordability programs and hundreds of billions of dollars in discounts and fees paid to PBMs [pharmacy benefit managers] by pharmaceutical companies that should lower the costs of medicines for Americans, but unfortunately this system can drive prices higher,” Eli Lilly said in a statement to Quartz.