Drug pricing

Sanders says he wants Novo Nordisk to “do the right thing” and lower the costs of Ozempic and Wegovy. But only the Inflation Reduction Act can achieve that.

The pharmaceutical industry is facing critical attention, particularly around drug pricing and development costs. Drug development cost is about 10% of the total healthcare spend in the United States. Broader issues such as local monopolies, utilization, unit, and costs and local monopolies, politics and a fragmented payer system contribute to the increasingly high costs to patients.

Citing a JAMA study that found Ozempic could be profitably produced at under $5 per month, Senator Bernie Sanders on Wednesday called on Novo Nordisk to lower prices for the diabetes treatment and the weight-loss drug Wegovy.

Health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) is a critical but sometimes overlooked part of drug development. Decentralized trials now make it easy.

Oprah Winfrey this week shone the spotlight on these transformative GLP-1 medications. Now, it’s time for Medicare to cover them and expand access to millions of Americans.

Following its label expansion earlier this month, Medicare on Thursday said it will now cover the use of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy in patients with overweight or obesity who have preexisting cardiovascular disease.

A new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office predicts that Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide will likely be subjected to Medicare’s Drug Price Negotiation Program under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Two days after winning FDA approval, Orchard Therapeutics on Wednesday provided its U.S. launch plans for metachromatic leukodystrophy gene therapy Lenmeldy, which has a wholesale acquisition cost of $4.25 million for the one-time treatment.

President Joe Biden has made drug pricing a cornerstone of his campaign, but former President Donald Trump also plans to target drugmakers if he reenters the White House.

With Boehringer Ingelheim’s announcement earlier this month that it was capping U.S. inhaler costs at $35 per month, AstraZeneca on Monday followed suit.