Novo blames pharma middlemen over Wegovy pricing: Bloomberg News

Amid mounting criticism over its pricing strategy for its popular weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, Novo Nordisk (NVO) said that the company retains only 60% of the products’ list price after payments to pharma middlemen, according to Bloomberg News.

The Danish drugmaker made the remarks on Friday in a letter to Senator Bernie Sanders, who just last month called for a congressional probe into the issue as the Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Nov (NVO) markets Ozempic and its sister drug Wegovy, both of which contains the active ingredient, semaglutide, at a list price of $968.52 and $1,349.02, respectively.

The company shrugged off the critics, noting that a portion of the list price goes to pharma middlemen in the complex US healthcare system.

Pharmacy benefit managers, widely known as middlemen in the pharmaceutical supply chain, have also faced regulatory scrutiny over their role in soaring drug prices. CVS Health (CVS), UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Cigna (CI), and Humana (HUM) operate some of the leading PBMs in the industry.

In March, Sanders cited a peer-reviewed study to argue that Novo’s (NVO) diabetes drug Ozempic, which is increasingly used off-label for weight loss, could be produced profitably for about $5 a month.

Novo (NVO) argued that it is unfair to focus solely on the difference between the production cost and the cost to payers, as the company spends billions of dollars up-front to develop the drugs.