A Huge Price Cut on Wegovy for Cash-Paying Patients

Prices are moving quickly for people seeking obesity treatment with semaglutide and tirzepatide. Last week, Lilly offered another price cut for Zepbound. At the time, we noted inaction from Novo Nordisk on this front. But it barely took a week for this formerly unchallenged market leader to step up and respond with a huge price cut on Wegovy – for cash-paying patients only.

If you’ve got a bankroll for cash-pay healthcare, then the list price for every strength of Wegovy just went down from $1,350 per month to only $499. That’s a 63% price cut.

If you have the cash.

All Strengths, Injection Pens

The U.S. President for Novo Nordisk, Dave Moore, points with pride to this move:

“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, and 90% of Wegovy patients with coverage pay $0 to $25 a month for Wegovy. With NovoCare Pharmacy, patients and prescribers alike have another option that provides convenient access to all doses of real, FDA-approved Wegovy at a reduced cost in our high-quality pen.”

Note his emphasis on the injections pens. These make it utterly simple to use this medicine – very much better than having to draw up a dose into a syringe. By making all doses available in pens to cash-paying patients at this price, we must admit that Novo has one-upped Lilly for now.

Golden Rule Obesity Care

Yes, this is a step in the right direction. But “we still have a long way to go” as OAC CEO Joe Nadglowski tells us repeatedly. He’s right. This is not fair and equitable obesity care. It is golden rule obesity care. If you have the gold, the rules work for you.

Meanwhile, the folks with less than gold-plated health insurance or no resources to pay $500 monthly for a GLP-1 are out of luck. These are often the people whose health suffers the most from obesity. People who suffer blame for not taking care of a condition for which they are denied care.

They are also people who wind up becoming very expensive patients with kidney, liver, heart, and joint disease that might have been prevented with better obesity care.

We are on the way to figuring this out. Costs for obesity medicines are coming down. Evidence is adding up for its benefits. But it is maddening to watch this slow-motion train wreck while we inch toward a more equitable approach for obesity care.

We can do so much better.

Click here for the announcement from Novo Nordisk, here, here, and here for further reporting.

Cash Only, photograph by Haelele Waimings MOA / Wikimedia Commons

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March 6, 2025