Novo Nordisk will reduce the value of its blockbuster weight reduction medicine Wegovy to $499 per 30 days for sure sufferers who pay utilizing their very own cash as a substitute of going via insurance coverage, the drug maker stated on Wednesday.
The transfer may trigger extra sufferers to begin taking the drug. However the impression stands to be restricted, as a result of the choice doesn’t decrease costs for sufferers who get their medical insurance via authorities packages or for employers which are fighting the massive prices of medicines like Wegovy, which have revolutionized the remedy of weight problems.
To be eligible for the decreased worth, sufferers have to be uninsured or commercially insured on plans that don’t cowl the drug. Beforehand, the drug maker had supplied a coupon to such sufferers permitting them to get a month’s provide of the drug for $650; Wednesday’s transfer interprets into financial savings of $150 per 30 days for such sufferers.
The brand new providing just isn’t out there to tens of hundreds of thousands of Individuals who get their insurance coverage via authorities packages like Medicare and Medicaid — a demographic that largely lacks insurance coverage protection for weight reduction medication like Wegovy. To get Novo Nordisk’s drug, these sufferers should usually pay $1,300 or extra per 30 days out of pocket at a pharmacy.
Novo Nordisk will provide the discounted product via a web-based pharmacy that can ship prescriptions to sufferers via the mail — a method that drug makers are more and more utilizing to take extra management of the distribution of their merchandise. Novo Nordisk’s competitor, Eli Lilly, has the same providing for vials of its weight reduction drug, Zepbound, for $499 per 30 days or much less.
Novo Nordisk’s worth discount comes simply weeks earlier than the marketplace for cheaper copycat variations of Wegovy is predicted to contract considerably.
For the previous few years, sufferers searching for decrease costs have turned to variations created via a drug-ingredient mixing course of referred to as compounding, which is permitted by regulators when patented merchandise are briefly provide.
Sufferers typically pay about $150 per 30 days out of pocket for compounded variations of Wegovy. An estimated two million sufferers obtained the drug this manner over a latest one-year interval.
However final month the Meals and Drug Administration declared the Wegovy scarcity over and ordered compounders to wind down their operations by April or Might. Novo Nordisk now has the chance to scoop up displaced sufferers who had been counting on compounding and enhance gross sales of its official model of the drug.
