Wegovy Price Cuts Face Affordability Hurdles
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Novo Nordisk has moved ahead of schedule, beginning the sale of its popular weight-loss drug Wegovy for $349 a month to patients paying the full bill. This price reduction, down from $499, aligns with the terms of a drug pricing agreement outlined earlier this month with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. The original deal anticipated this price point, as well as a similar one for the diabetes drug Ozempic, starting in January.
The $349 cash price will also apply to most doses of Ozempic, both of which are chemically known as semaglutide. However, the highest 2-milligram dose of Ozempic will remain priced at $499. Novo Nordisk stated that this change is part of a broader effort to expand access to "authentic, FDA-approved semaglutide medicines".
To further incentivize new users, Novo has also initiated a temporary offer of $199 a month for the first two months of the lowest two doses of Wegovy and Ozempic. This introductory deal is available to new cash-paying patients signing up between now and March 31, 2026, and can be accessed through various partners, including GoodRx, WeightWatchers, and Costco. GoodRx also announced plans to launch a weight-loss telehealth service for these drugs, priced at $39 a month for early subscribers.
The Danish drugmaker's swift action comes as it struggles to defend its market share against U.S. rival Eli Lilly. Lilly, which also offers its own GLP-1 receptor agonist drug, Zepbound, moved faster to offer pricing breaks to cash payers. Lilly also announced that the lowest dose of Zepbound would be available for cash payers at $299 per month starting in January, with subsequent doses priced at $449.
Novo Nordisk’s move to accelerate pricing adjustments followed a signal of deep change after appointing Mike Doustdar as CEO in August, a period that also included the setting of a course for 9,000 global layoffs.
While the price cuts are significant, health experts and doctors caution that the expense of these highly popular obesity treatments will remain challenging for many patients who lack insurance. Obesity treatments like Wegovy and Zepbound have soared in popularity due to their effectiveness in clinical trials, where they helped people shed 15% to 22% of their body weight. However, affordability has been a persistent issue.
Stacie Dusetzina, a prescription drug pricing expert and professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, noted that new prices like $349 per month are "not going to really move the needle for a person who doesn’t have a pretty reasonable amount of disposable income". Previous research indicates that people typically have difficulty affording a medication when the cost exceeds $100 per month for a prescription. A recent poll found that about half of the people currently taking GLP-1 treatments report finding them hard to afford.
Adding to the complexity surrounding these drugs, the GLP-1 agonist class continues to be the subject of accumulating evidence regarding effects beyond diabetes and weight loss. A large retrospective analysis involving 6,871 patients found that colon cancer patients with a history of using GLP-1 receptor agonists for obesity had a five-year mortality rate that was less than half the rate of non-users (15.5% versus 37.1%). This benefit persisted after adjusting for confounding factors but was only observed in patients with a body mass index (BMI) over 35. Researchers, however, acknowledged a key limitation: the findings were based on a small sample size of only 103 patients exposed to GLP-1 agonists.
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Wegovy Price Cuts
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