A uncommon concern unites Individuals throughout the political divide: the nation’s damaged healthcare system, which is slowly killing its residents. The disaster has even bridged the hole between unlikely allies: MAGA proponent and billionaire Elon Musk and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Sanders, a champion of Europe’s social market mannequin, lately joined President Biden in urging Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk to slash the costs of its well-liked remedies.
The shortcoming to offer reasonably priced entry to life-saving medication, notably for diet-induced diabetes and weight problems, claims greater than 43,000 lives yearly—deaths that could possibly be prevented if the costs of medicines like Ozempic and Wegovy have been decrease.
“Fixing weight problems enormously reduces [the] threat of different ailments, particularly diabetes, and improves high quality of life. We do have to discover a approach to make urge for food inhibitors accessible to anybody who needs them,” Sanders mentioned on Tuesday, quoting the Tesla CEO from earlier this month. “And Mr. Musk is correct.”
The centibillionaire has repeatedly clashed with the senator over revenue inequality, with Musk as soon as posting how he retains forgetting Sanders isn’t useless but. Nevertheless it’s arduous to battle with somebody who agrees with you.
Musk himself has waged a continuing battle with the dimensions, having been fat-shamed by his very personal father earlier than opting to take Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy to assist slim down chemically.
“I actually am with Bernie on this one,” Musk posted on Tuesday.
74 cents of each greenback in gross sales goes to middlemen
Sanders was talking at a subcommittee listening to that known as Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen as a witness. By the senator’s estimate, Jørgensen is charging U.S. sufferers 9 occasions what they cost German friends web of listing worth rebates.
Practically three-quarters of the income Novo Nordisk has generated from the $50 billion in whole gross sales for the reason that 2018 launch of its so-called GLP-1 drug semaglutide (marketed below the model title Ozempic and Wegovy) comes from the U.S. market, a determine Jørgensen didn’t dispute.
“America is Novo Nordisk’s money cow for Ozempic and Wegovy,” Sanders mentioned. “All we’re saying, Mr. Jørgensen, is deal with the American individuals the identical approach that you just deal with individuals all around the world—cease ripping us off.”
Jørgensen mentioned his firm is investing $30 billion to develop manufacturing and decrease the drug’s value.
As a substitute, he blamed pharmacy profit managers (PBMs), the middlemen who negotiate costs with prospects in a U.S. healthcare system that’s incentivized to maintain prices up on the expense of affected person outcomes.
“They get a payment primarily based on listing worth—so the upper listing worth, the extra payment they get for a similar job,” he mentioned, including, on common, 74 cents of every greenback income Novo Nordisk makes within the U.S. leads to the pockets of PBMs and insurers.
“In our expertise, merchandise that include a low listing worth get much less protection. It’s much less engaging.”
When Sanders countered that he had secured a written dedication from three main PBMs that they’d not decrease or drop protection of Novo Nordisk medication if the corporate reduce its listing costs, the CEO was skeptical.
“That’s new data for me.” Jørgensen replied. “I don’t know below which situations such a promise comes. I haven’t seen any of that.”
When contacted by Fortune for remark, a spokesman for Novo Nordisk reiterated his CEO’s remark that no single firm can repair the American healthcare system alone.
Nonetheless, it seemed ahead to persevering with to work with policymakers towards “significant options” for sufferers counting on its medicines.
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