Hitting the Pharmaceutical Jackpot With Novo’s Ozempic and Wegovy
Novo faces increasing pressure to cut prices as demand skyrockets.
Photographer: George Frey/BloombergHi, it’s Bob in New York. I’ve been writing about drug costs for years, and Ozempic and Wegovy turn out to be in a unique category. Before we get to that …
When I started writing about drug costs more than two decades ago, $25,000 a year was considered a high price. Since then everything’s gone up. Cancer drugs now routinely cost $200,000 a year. Injections for immune diseases like psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis can top $80,000 annually. And exotic gene therapies for rare diseases can hit $3 million for a one-time treatment.
Drugmakers justify the prices by citing their considerable research budgets. Novo Nordisk is no exception. It says it spent over $10 billion developing Ozempic and similar drugs over three decades, and that its investment in obesity medicines only turned profitable in the last two years. Wegovy, the high-dose obesity version of Ozempic, wasn’t approved in the US until 2021.