October 18, 2025 — It’s entertaining, but not really funny. At an Oval Office press event Thursday, which was supposed to be all about fertility drugs, President Trump opened his remarks talking about “a certain drug” that costs $130 in London and $1,300 in New York. “So now we’re going to be paying, instead of $1,300, you’ll be paying […]
August 20, 2025 — By now, it should be obvious. List prices for GLP-1 medicines like semaglutide and tirzepatide are fiction. If you had any doubt, read up on the deal Novo Nordisk just struck with GoodRx to sell both the Ozempic and Wegovy brands of semaglutide for $499 per month. This deal with GoodRx is happening for two […]
August 2, 2025 — When the new administration announced in April that it would not be implementing expanded access to obesity medicines in Medicare, they suggested this would not be the final word. Yesterday, we got a hint of what might come. Paige Winfield Cunningham reported in the Washington Post that CMS has drafted a plan to allow Medicare […]
July 2, 2025 — A new report from Reuters tells us that Novo Nordisk is having a hard time coming to terms with its failure to solidify a leadership position in the obesity market it created from nothing with semaglutide. Former executives and financial analysts alike say the company was too conservative and unprepared for a blockbuster launch: “way, way, […]
May 18, 2025 — “Today, we salute you, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen,” writes Dave Knapp on his widely-read substack commentary. After a startling transition in leadership at Novo Nordisk, Jørgensen is now the outgoing CEO. Jørgensen is the CEO who guided the successful launch of Ozempic and Wegovy. He made the company into one of the most valuable in Europe. […]
May 7, 2025 — The word of the day in obesity is volatility. Minutes ago in Denmark, Novo Nordisk announced their first quarter business results and revealed a 13% drop in obesity drug sales, a reduction in their sales forecast, and yet the response in European stock markets was that the stock rose in value. In fact, it rose […]
January 29, 2025 — FDA yesterday approved Ozempic (semaglutide) to prevent kidney failure and death in persons with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. This fits with one of the five trends for this year: the steady expansion of health benefits for advanced medicines used in obesity and diabetes. But note that this approval covers the use of […]
January 16, 2025 — This will be an interesting year for drug pricing, especially for obesity medicines – if you can even figure out what is really going on with them. It appears that list prices for Ozempic (semaglutide), Mounjaro (tirzepatide), and Zepbound (also tirzepatide) have all gone up this year. The Wegovy (semaglutide) list price did not change. […]
January 10, 2025 — Let’s talk selfies. For me, they were my reality check. Full-body shots? Forget it. Every milestone photo with my family got run through every beautification filter the App Store could throw at me, but nothing could match the image I wanted to see staring back. That’s when I knew – it was time for a […]
January 7, 2025 — It used to be that this was the time of year when popular culture turned its attention to weight loss season. The release of U.S. News rankings of “Best Diets” commanded media attention. Weight loss tips were everywhere. But no more is this true. No, idle talk about weight loss has not disappeared. But it […]
