Sen. Bernie Sanders’ aggressive targeting of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy pricing, and not Eli Lilly’s rival drugs, is not fair.
In case you missed it, this week’s big event was a showdown between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate health committee, and Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen. In a two-hour hearing on Tuesday, the politician and pharma exec clashed over U.S. prices for the Danish drugmaker’s wildly popular GLP-1 drugs for type 2 diabetes and obesity, Ozempic and Wegovy.
Sanders, a vocal critic of what he considers to be Big Pharma’s greed, targeted Novo in April 2024 when he launched an investigation into the “unjustifiably high prices” of Ozempic and Wegovy. In a letter to Jørgensen at the time, Sanders warned that the blockbuster drugs are straining Medicare and Medicaid budgets and “severely limiting access for patients” who desperately need them.
Clearly, the gauntlet had been thrown down with Novo. However, as a longtime observer of the pharma industry, I find Sanders’ aggressive targeting of Novo and not rival Eli Lilly to be unfair. Why shouldn’t Lilly also “feel the Bern”?
It bears remembering that Lilly is Novo’s fierce competitor in the type 2 diabetes and weight-loss markets, with its own blockbuster GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. While Novo got an early lead in the obesity space, securing the FDA’s approval of Wegovy in June 2021, the regulator’s greenlight for Lilly’s Zepbound in November 2023 officially marked the start of a two-horse race in which Lilly is closing the market share gap with Novo.
Unlike previous hearings in which the Senate health committee called the CEOs of multiple Big Pharma companies to testify, Jørgensen was alone in the hot seat on Tuesday. This was a significant departure from a May 2023 hearing that brought together the heads of the three major insulin manufacturers—Lilly, Novo and Sanofi—and a February 2024 panel that included the CEOs of BMS, J&J and Merck, who were grilled as to why the U.S. pays the world’s highest prices for prescription drugs.
However, the purpose of Tuesday’s proceeding was to answer a singular question, as stated in the name of the hearing: “Why Is Novo Nordisk Charging Americans with Diabetes and Obesity Outrageously High Prices for Ozempic and Wegovy?” My question is: Why is the Danish drugmaker being singled out while Lilly is given a free pass?
Double Standard at Work
Not only was Lilly CEO David Ricks conspicuoulsly absent from Tuesday’s hearing, Lilly’s competing Mounjaro and Zepbound products were barely mentioned by senators on either side of the political aisle. It was a glaring omission given the fierce competition between Lilly and Novo, which has already resulted in lower drug prices.
Prior to Tuesday’s hearing, I asked Barclays analyst Emily Field why Sanders launched an investigation into Novo’s pricing and not Lilly’s, and called Jørgensen to testify and not Ricks. She bluntly replied: “It’s just because they’re a foreign company.”
This perhaps explains why Sanders is treating Lilly and Novo very differently. Case in point: A statement issued last month in which Sanders said he was “pleased” with Lilly’s decision to “lower the starter price” of Zepbound. To be fair, the senator also criticized Lilly for the “outrageous” price of Mounjaro and warned that “even with this modest price reduction for Zepbound, millions of Americans will still be unable to afford the diabetes and weight-loss drugs they desperately need.”
Then, why hasn’t Lilly’s CEO been hauled before the Senate health committee to answer for these exorbitant prices?
I asked Sanders’ office if he also plans to launch an investigation of Lilly’s U.S. pricing for Mounjaro and Zepbound, or to subpoena Ricks to testify, but I did not hear back before deadline. I’ll let you know if that changes. In the meantime, it seems to me that this is a fundamental issue of fairness. Shouldn’t Ricks get the same treatment as Jørgensen?
