Sanders Targets ‘Unacceptable’ Price of Weight-Loss Drugs Ozempic and Wegovy

Vermont senator will grill CEO of Danish pharma giant whose drugs cost Americans 10 times more than abroad

The blockbuster weight-loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic are arguably as omnipresent in the American zeitgeist as Taylor Swift or the iPhone. The drugs and others in its class are associated with the sparkle of Hollywood, on the lips of Oprah and considered transformative by doctors.

But the giant market for drugs like Wegovy, including not just the roughly 11% of adults who have diabetes but also the 42% of adults who have obesity, has conjured one of the demons of American healthcare – price.

Americans paid 10 times more for Ozempic than patients in the United Kingdom in 2023 – $936 a month compared with $93. Wegovy costs Americans $1,349 a month, compared with $296 in the Netherlands (the drug is not yet available in the UK).

That wild discrepancy has captured the attention of one of the drug industry’s loudest critics, the US senator Bernie Sanders.

“Prices vary all over the world, but we are paying far, far, far more for the same products than other countries,” Sanders told the Guardian in an interview. “And that is unacceptable to me.”

Sanders, an independent from Vermont and chairman of the powerful Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee, has used his pulpit to haul pharmaceutical executives before the public and demand lower prices.