Stock prices slide for makers of Ozempic, Wegovy after Biden calls for cheaper obesity drugs

By John Lauerman, Madison Muller and Naomi Kresge

Novo Nordisk A/S and Eli Lilly & Co. shares fell Tuesday after President Joe Biden continued his push for cheaper drugs by demanding price cuts on their blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drugs.

The companies are charging “unconscionably high prices” that are above those paid in other countries, Biden said in an editorial with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders published in USA Today. If “pharmaceutical companies refuse to substantially lower prescription drug prices in our country and end their greed, we will do everything within our power to end it for them,” they wrote.

Novo fell 1.1% in Copenhagen Tuesday, while Lilly shares lost as much as 3.9% before paring losses in New York.

“Comparing list prices in the United States to other countries ignores patient affordability programs,” as well as billions of dollars in discounts and fees paid to pharmacy benefit managers that should lower the costs, a Lilly spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Unfortunately this system can drive prices higher.”

Novo Nordisk did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Analysts foresee exploding sales for the injected medicines, particularly in fighting obesity, a market that Goldman Sachs estimates may reach $130 billion annually by the end of the decade. Companies including Pfizer Inc., AstraZeneca Plc and Amgen Inc., along with a host of small biotechs, are racing to get competing products to consumers.

A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll from May — six months before the US election — showed that voters in swing states trust Biden over Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on health care to the tune of 45% to 39%. Specifically on health-care costs, Biden held a four-percentage point advantage over Trump at 44%.

Biden’s comments seem like “a last-ditch effort to appease certain voters,” according to a note from Mizuho’s Jared Holz. In view of the drugs’ benefits in diabetes, heart disease and other conditions, he said the price of around $1,000 a month “actually seems very inexpensive.”

Drug costs have been a long-running focus for the Biden administration. The Inflation Reduction Act has given Medicare, the US health program for seniors, unprecedented power to negotiate prices once drugs have been on the market for a certain period of time. Novo’s Ozempic and Wegovy became a prime concern for Sanders earlier this year, after a study showed that Ozempic could be profitably produced for less than $5 a month.

Trump has also pushed to lower drug costs. He issued an executive order during his term mandating the US government pay prices pegged to those overseas. A federal judge struck down the order and the Biden administration froze it, but Trump has vowed to revive it.

This year’s price debate reached Novo’s home market of Denmark, with Sanders urging Danes in a letter in one of the country’s biggest newspapers to force Novo to cut prices. Denmark also recently asked doctors to start moving Ozempic patients onto cheaper drugs.

Novo has blamed the high US list prices for Ozempic and Wegovy on the way the health system is structured, citing rebates and fees paid to middlemen. The company said in a letter to Sanders in May that it’s prepared to work with US lawmakers to address what it called systemic issues. Chief Executive Officer Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen is set to testify before a Senate committee chaired by Sanders in September about the drugs’ prices.

Novo has said it expects discounts on both drugs to continue to rise, in particular as more insurers cover Wegovy. Lilly has evaded some of the scrutiny that Novo has been under so far.

Optimism over soaring sales of Novo’s Wegovy for obesity and its sister drug for diabetes, Ozempic, have seen its market capitalization surge beyond $600 billion this year, reinforcing its position as Europe’s most valuable listed company. The stock is up more than 80% in the past year and has more than quintupled since the start of 2020.

– With assistance from Riley Griffin and Anne Cronin.