Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today released an alarming new report exposing the potential of weight loss drugs to bankrupt American health care.
In the report, HELP Committee Majority Staff modeled how new weight loss drugs could impact prescription drug spending, even while taking into account estimated manufacturer discounts. Key findings from the report include:
- If half of adults with obesity took Wegovy and the other new weight loss drugs, it could cost $411 billion per year – more than what Americans spent on all retail prescription drugs in 2022 ($406 billion).
- If half of all Medicare and Medicaid patients who are obese took Wegovy and other weight loss drugs, Medicare and Medicaid could spend $166 billion per year – rivaling what Medicare and Medicaid spent on all retail prescription drugs in 2022 ($175 billion).
- Unless prices are substantially reduced, Wegovy and other weight loss drugs could push Americans to spend $1 trillion per year on all prescription drugs.
- If Novo Nordisk, a Danish company, charged Americans the same price it charges people in Denmark for Wegovy, the U.S. health care system could save up to $317 billion dollars per year if half of adults with obesity took the drug. Taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid alone could save $128 billion per year.
- If Novo Nordisk dropped the price of Wegovy in the U.S down to the price in Denmark, the U.S. health care system could pay for new weight loss drugs for 100% of adults with obesity for less than the cost of covering 25% of the population with obesity at current U.S. net prices annually.
“Today’s report makes it crystal clear: The outrageously high price of Wegovy and other weight loss drugs have the potential to bankrupt Medicare and our entire health care system,” Sanders said. “The unjustifiably high prices of these weight loss drugs could also cause a massive spike in prescription drug spending that could lead to an historic increase in premiums for Medicare and everyone who has health insurance. The United States Congress and the federal government cannot allow that to happen. There is no rational reason, other than greed, for Novo Nordisk to charge Americans struggling with obesity $1,349 for Wegovy when this same exact product can be purchased for just $186 in Denmark, $137 in Germany, and $92 in the United Kingdom, while it costs less than $5 to profitably manufacture.”
On April 24, 2024, the HELP Committee launched an investigation into the outrageously high prices Novo Nordisk is charging for Ozempic and Wegovy in the U.S. On April 30, Chairman Sanders commended the Federal Trade Commission for taking action against the bogus patents Novo Nordisk has filed to prevent Americans from receiving a generic version of Ozempic at a much lower price. On May 13, Chairman Sanders wrote an op-ed on the front page of the Danish paper Politiken to win their help in urging Novo Nordisk to reduce the outrageous price of Ozempic and Wegovy in the U.S.
To read the report, click here.
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Categories: Health Care, Press Release
As someone who has both been the victim of medication shortages for critical medications AND someone on Ozempic for Diabetes, I have been worried about supply and price a lot lately. With the abundance of new avenues for quick and easy prescriptions for critical meds for people for whom it’s NOT critical, shortages and price spikes are a real concern.
No investigation needed. Remove the government protectionist racket on drugs such as patents and import taxes. All drug price increases and drug shortages are a government manufactured scarcity problem. The people should be free from subsidizing other people’s personal unhealthy choices, and supporting pharma companies greed, with the use of violent government force.
Don’t worry, the problem will be exacerbated, and you will pay. The cheerleaders will beg for it.
Drugs are bad mmkay.
Isn’t this part of your mission statement? “Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order.”
You think that patents are part of a government protectionist racket and not a monopoly on one’s intellectual property? You think that the federal government causes shortages of Wegovy that is manufactured in Europe? Do you Libertarians understand how anything works? I would be embarrassed if I wrote something like this. Absolutely embarrassed
@Chris, The social order is the collective result of individual voluntary decision making and those individual’s responsibility for their decision’s outcomes. Anything that uses violence to disrupt and reorder that action/responsibility process, is a disruption to the social order, and causes an overall destruction of wealth as a result.
When it comes to the patents, it absolutely is a government created monopoly, you are correct. That government monopoly creates an increase in costs, an increase in supply of counterfeit items (which are making their way to your store shelves right now), and a shorter supply, than there otherwise would be if the patents (violence) didn’t exist, all things being equal. It’s basic math.
https://mises.org/mises-daily/marginal-utility-not-rocket-science
Maybe you can teach me how things work. You always seem to be insinuating that fundamentally, government has absolutely nothing to do with anything that is wrong in society. I’m not a libertarian, I just pay attention to basic cause and effect without political bias.
Another aspect is the revolving door between Big Pharma and government. They have their hands in each other’s pockets. Think military, government, industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about.
Last time I checked, it’s free to get off your ass and move around.
Note to Vermont legislators:
These drugs DO NOT need to receive mandatory coverage in any socialist health care legislation for obesity treatment.
i lost 15 pounds this winter hauling fire wood /// lost weight and stayed warm twice///
Ozempic was not developed as a weight loss drug. It was designed to lower the A1C for people with diabetes. Weight loss is a secondary effect of the drug. I know I take it. The “beautiful people” of the world with no self-control turned it into a weight loss drug because they are too lazy to go on a diet and stop eating.
You are fortunate James, to either afford it, or have an insurance policy that pays for it. My wife has been prescribed it by two seperate doctors for diabetes as the preferred treatment, but neither MediCARE, or her supplemental BCBS insurance will cover it. It’s $1300+ out of HER pocket which is already paying almost $500/month for MediCARE and BCBS.
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notes that overconsumption of either variety of corn syrup can be harmful to health. Each variety has been linked to heart disease and type 2 diabetes, “and studies show that corn syrup increases appetite, thus promoting obesity,” says Young. Dec 20, 2023
Has anyone read food labels and determined corn syrup is in just about every processed food product? The amount of sugar and salt (mostly chemically charged, enhanced, or chemically modified) is making people sick, stupid, and overweight – all by design. Has anyone compared American food labels to European food labels?
Do away with garbage, poison food products, problem solved. Yet, that wouldn’t be profitable to Big Pharma or the eugenists/globalist ghouls (Rockefeller/Gates.)