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'Stop ripping us off': Senate grills Novo Nordisk CEO on Ozempic drug pricing
- floppiplopp 2y agoOh, oh! Now do US pharma companies... and and, landlords. Yeah, that'll be great. And then private equity. Those are just plain bastards. Is this the end of free market capitalism?
- anonzzzies 2y agoBut don't all other companies do the same? Also ones in the US itself? So far any price on any prescription drug I have seen on reddit by US people and companies is far cheaper here. For instance; omeprazole prescription seems to be $90 and otc $32 for almost a month: I pay less than 3 euros here (got them yesterday). Not sure who is doing it, but every US price I have seen is at least 10x higher than it is here in the EU.
- faangguyindia 2y agoU can get it dirt cheap from India (indian pharma grade from sunpharma)
- casualscience 2y agoThe story goes that the US subsidizes all the drug prices around the world. Without the insane US margins, drug companies wouldn't ever do the needed R&D... so they say.
- wernerb 2y agoWasn't if part of US law that medicine prices cannot be negotiated?
- jackTheBuilder 2y agoMedicare + Medicaid has been prohibited from assisting negotiation of drug price between pharmacy + drug company for a few decades. That is set to change in the future id my understanding. I have private health care insurance so my insurance company would try negotiate the price down. I agree with other commenters saying basically, drug companies all around the world do R&D, are happy to sell drugs at cost in England or Somalia, but will aim to make money in US selling drugs with a healthy profit margin here.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoIn the article the drug maker suggestss that rather than negotiate the price down, US insurers stop buying the drug if he cuts the price too low. That seems like a wild claim to make, but since it's just reported as if that was normal rather than a shocking scandal, I guess it's probably true.
- whaleofatw2022 2y agoIt's part of the grift. Expensive drugs means all sorts of middle men negotiate concessions to make themselves get better performance reviews.
- ywvcbk 2y ago> so my insurance company would try negotiate the price down. Do they have any incentives to do that though? If their profits are fixed at a specific % wouldn’t they be incentivized to spend as much as possible so that they could increase premiums (as long as all other companies play along)?
- 1123581321 2y agoIf premiums are too high, employers will switch the insurance company they offer employees.
- triceratops 2y agoTo whom? Everyone will do the same because everyone's incentives are the same.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoIf the free market has decided it's more efficient to let Americans suffer horribly and then die, who are we to argue.
- iwontberude 2y agoAmericans like suffering, stop trying to take this from them.
- gklitz 2y agoThe “insane US margins” don’t go to the pharma companies, they go to the PBM middlemen who take home the majority of the list price, and therefore have interest in higher list prices, which also increases copay. That’s why it’s consistent across the USA market, and why they drop products that lower prices.
- pasabagi 2y agoI've read that big pharma are primarily patent companies: most of the actual research is done by universities, then most of the production is outsourced.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThat simply isnt true and is a political fiction. Pharma companies spend 10x what universities and the NIH do. The only grain of truth in it is if you compare a tiny subset of what pharma companies do, and look only are extremely early drug exploration, and ignore all of the subsequent development like drug screening, testing, formulation, and clinical trials.
- InfiniteLoup 2y ago'Start paying us off like the US pharmaceutical companies do': Senate grills Novo Nordisk CEO on Ozempic drug pricing /s
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoThis bit feels like it should have been given more detail: > In his written testimony, Jørgensen said Novo Nordisk’s insulin product Levemir was previously available to 90% of U.S. patients through formularies. But insurers began to drop coverage of the insulin after Novo Nordisk cut its list price, leading to only 36% of patients having access. > That eventually drove the company to discontinue the insulin So insurers are refusing to buy cheaper drugs? What's the story there?
- Laksen 2y agoIt's the American PBMs that make their money on the difference between the list price and the price they sell it for. Higher list price means more profit This was repeated over and over in the hearing. And apparently the regulation of PBMs (changed about a year ago) hasn't resulted in PBMs taking up cheaper drugs
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoAn interesting article on this found thanks to your help with search keywords: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-things-to-know-about-pharmacy-benefit-managers/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-things-to-know-ab...
- emchammer 2y agoThis article is almost unbelievable. This whole thing seems like an incredibly complex racket comparable to cryptocurrency securities fraud.
- salawat 2y agoYou mean the difference between wholesale price of the manufacturer and the negotiated discount by the PBM right? Your use of pronouns obfuscates who you're talking about.
- ywvcbk 2y agoDo American insurance companies have any incentives to minimize their spending?
- potatoicecoffee 2y agomaybe the american government should start negotiating drug prices more effetively like the australia does with the pharmaceutical benefits scheme
- datavirtue 2y agoJørgensen pointed out how drugs were only 10% of medical costs and that the real issue was obesity and the many diseases that accompany it making the drugs required in the first place. No one seemed interested in the truth.
- ImJamal 2y agoIt is easier to take a drug than to eat better and work out.
- DangitBobby 2y agoI'm not obese and still have a prescription. Same with my wife, except she has 3. What now?
- ImJamal 2y agoYour wife has 3 prescriptions for Ozempic? We aren't talking about random prescriptions here...
- AStonesThrow 2y agoMost of the drugs that I've been offered have weight-gain as a prominent and common side effect. Some parents even got irate about gynecomastia, which is typically not seen isolated from obesity. How many drugs on the market have "loss of appetite/weight" as a side effect? Probably none, outside of the ones currently labeled for it. And methamphetamine. Well, there was also AZT, Fen-Phen... Didn't heroin help a few folks slim down a bit? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin_chic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin_chic
- 1GZ0 2y agoMaybe the reason that drug prices in the US are higher across the board has more to do with insurers than the drugmakers? Sure seems like it.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoThere are three problems: the capital cost of scaling production, PBMs and the absurd margins Novo Nordisk is milking. PBMs are a separate issue. But the grand bargain in the first and last is the U.S. giving Novo Nordisk a loan in exchange for domestic production and a fixed price for the term of the loan, e.g. $50 per month, $9 cheaper than what they charge in Germany [1]. [1] https://www.help.senate.gov/chair/newsroom/press/prepared-remarks-sanders-leads-help-committee-hearing-with-novo-nordisk-ceo-on-outrageous-ozempic-and-wegovy-prices https://www.help.senate.gov/chair/newsroom/press/prepared-re...
- pjfin123 2y ago> In a release, the Senate Health Committee said it would cost the U.S. $411 billion per year if half of all Americans took weight loss drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. That’s $5 billion more than what Americans spent on all prescription drugs in 2022. If these drugs are effective as they seem to be they might still be worth it at this price. Giving most Americans Ozempic would probably improve people's health more per $ than the current medical system is.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago> A recent report released by the Milken Institute shows that the annual cost and the economic impact of obesity in the United States exceeds $1.4 trillion.[1] A 3.17x return on investment is a steal! 1. https://obesitymedicine.org/blog/health-economic-impact-of-obesity/ https://obesitymedicine.org/blog/health-economic-impact-of-o...
- gklitz 2y agoLost all respect for Bernie on this. He’s just blatantly saying that he’s colluding with PBMs. And imagine the absurdity of what he’s saying at the trial. He’s saying he’s had pre talks with PBMs and they are going “we are actually willing to accept lower prices, we promise not to stop buying if you lower prices” Why would you even be in this situation in a normal market? The willingness to accept lower prices on a product should be automatic and the threat of not buying should be driving prices down not up. If the market was sane, the PBMs would be going: “Lower prices or we stop buying” But the scam is, PBMs are eating up 70%+ of the “list price” Americans aren’t buying drugs from Pharma companies, they are buying them from their Insurance/PBM/Pharmacy collusion, who dictate both which products you are allowed to buy under insurance and what the “pretend” list price is, so they push it up to maximize their own profits and maximize your copay, which is calculated based on a hypothetical list price they have inflated 4x times while in reality only paying 25% of it themselves.
- vpastore 2y ago[dead]