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Novo Nordisk reduces Ozempic's price to $499/month for self-paying patients, enhancing access to essential diabetes treatment and ensuring patient safety.
The lower cost is aimed to support patient access to authentic FDA-approved semaglutide medicines.
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Novo Nordisk announced its newest offer, granting self-paying patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes access to FDA-approved Ozempic for $499-per-month. The price change is a part of Novo Nordisk’s ongoing effort in expanding upon its new collaborations aimed at improving patient access to authentic semaglutide medicines.
Dave Moore, executive vice president of US operations at Novo Nordisk Inc, touched on the decision to alter the price, saying, “Improving access to our authentic FDA-approved treatments is central to our mission at Novo Nordisk. While Ozempic® is well covered in the US, let's not forget that there are some patients who pay out-of-pocket for this vital medicine. We believe that if even a single patient feels the need to turn to potentially unsafe and unapproved knockoff alternatives, that's one too many. This is why we felt it was important to make Ozempic®, the GLP-1 with the broadest range of FDA-approved indications for adults with type 2 diabetes, more affordable to those without insurance who deserve the real thing."1
The price change offers the prescription medication at half the original wholesale price of $997. Nove Nordisk made the change to provide uninsured or underinsured patients access to an affordable price for the medication. The effort is an attempt to maintain patient safety by trying to prevent patients from resulting to unapproved compound alternatives.
Norvo Nordisk’s new offer is available for patients with a current prescription for Ozempic on multiple platforms, including NovoCare Pharmacy (which now provides direct-to-consumer deliveries). The price change aims to deliver support to uninsured patients with type 2 diabetes facing financial restrictions limiting their ability to purchase the medicine at or above wholesale pricing.
Along with the price reduction for Ozempic, Novo Nordisk announced its collaboration with GoodRx, (the leading platform of medication saving within the U.S.) also offering Wegovy at the same reduced price of $499-per-month. Announced back in March this year, Novo Nordisk reduced prices for Wegovy prescriptions for uninsured and underinsured patients, with Ozempic following suit.
The price for both will be offered on the GoodRx platform to self-paying patients at upwards of 70,000 pharmacies across the U.S. This collaboration effort reflects Novo Nordisk’s commitment to partnering with healthcare companies sharing similar commitments to expanding access and affordability of healthcare and medications for patients.
Moore discussed the importance of improving access to Novo’s medications, saying, “Novo Nordisk continues to advance solutions for patients that improve affordability and access to our medicines, whether they have insurance or not. Today, over 55 million people in the U.S. have coverage specifically for weight management medicines.”2
Ozempic holds the most FDA-approved uses among GLP-1’s for patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes including:
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