Sanders asks Senate to subpoena Novo Nordisk president, require hearing testimony
11 Jun 2024
After launching an investigation into how Novo Nordisk prices its popular diabetes and obesity drugs, US Senator Bernie Sanders is now pushing for a Senate committee to vote in favour of a subpoena that would require the Danish pharma’s president, Doug Langa, “to provide testimony about why his company charges up to 10 to 15 times more” for semaglutide in the US than other countries.
Novo Nordisk markets the GLP-1 receptor agonistGLP-1 receptor agonist as Ozempic to treat diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss.
The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee, which Sanders chairs, will vote on June 18 regarding whether Langa’s presence will be required at a hearing on July 10.
“The HELP Committee has reached out time and time again to Novo Nordisk to request their voluntary attendance at a hearing,” Sanders said in a statement. “Unfortunately, despite all of our efforts, they have repeatedly denied our requests.”
The April investigation was in part triggered by a paper published in JAMA Open Network that found that, in regards to diabetes, semaglutide could be sold at a profit for less than $1 per month. For more, see Spotlight On: Will the ‘Bernie effect’ work once again to make GLP-1 receptor agonists affordable?
Sanders said that the investigation has already uncovered several pricing discrepancies for Ozempic and Wegovy in multiple countries. For example, the committee found that Novo Nordisk charges US patients with type 2 diabetes $969 a month for Ozempic, while it costs about $122 in the drugmaker’s home country of Denmark. For Wegovy, the monthly cost for patients with obesity is $1,348, compared with $186 in Denmark.
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