KFF Health News August 8, 2024
On May 13, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) published an open letter to Novo Nordisk on the front page of a leading Danish newspaper, urging the hometown company to live up to its altruistic standards by lowering U.S. prices for its blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs.
What Sanders didn’t realize was that Denmark, a country of 6 million, was enduring its own crisis over how to pay for the Novo Nordisk drugs Ozempic and Wegovy.
Most other developed countries, including Denmark, negotiate down drug costs for their citizens, paying prices that are a fraction of those in the United States. But when a drug is effective and expensive, pharmaceutical companies can play hardball on pricing. And Novo Nordisk did, at...