Senator Marshall Slams PBM Price Gouging Tactics in Ozempic and Wegovy Drug Pricing Hearing

Senator Marshall Slams PBM Price Gouging Tactics in Ozempic and Wegovy Drug Pricing Hearing

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. questioned the CEO of Novo Nordisk, the company that created the blockbuster drugs Ozempic (semaglutide) and Wegovy (semaglutide). As part of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on drug pricing, Senator Marshall questioned the CEO about the role that Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) play in inflating the prices of essential drugs. His series of questions exposed how these middlemen are reaping enormous profits at the expense of patients and pharmaceutical companies.

Senator Marshall has been a leading voice against abusive pricing practices by PBMs, who control which medications are covered by insurance, driving up costs for consumers. During the hearing, Marshall emphasized that Novo Nordisk receives only 26% of the revenue from drugs like Ozempic, while PBMs take 74%, highlighting the need for urgent reform of PBMs to lower prescription drug prices for patients.

You may click HERE or on the image above to watch Senator Marshall’s full remarks and questioning.

Highlights from Marshall’s questioning include:

On PBMs:

“Novo Nordisk is not the villain in this story – they’re a hero. We should be here celebrating this miracle innovation that’s responding to this diabetic epidemic we have in this country. It’s a miracle drug. 38 million Americans with diabetes that we’re helping out. This nation is spending $250, maybe $350, billion a year treating diabetes, not to mention the loss of work, and here’s a drug that’s going to help us treat the problem.”

“We all agree on this committee across the Senate that the cost of health care is too much, and that prescription drugs are too high, especially the out-of-pocket expenses, but we need to figure out who the villain is…Whatever the cost is, whichever number we want to use, Novo Nordisk keeps 24% of it, and the PBMs extract 74% – 26% and 74% – so really, the PBMs are making the bank here.”

“Let’s talk about PBMs for a second here, the real culprit in this room, in this story. So, these three big parent companies, the three big PBMs, control 80%-85% of the industry. Their gross revenue last year was $800 billion.”

“This committee has worked so hard on PBM reform. We’ve not passed our delinking bill, and I would ask the chairman to consider bringing the delinking bill back to the committee and let us mark it up as well. In that delinking bill, PBMs would receive a flat fee for their efforts, as opposed to a percentage of the sale, so we go to a flat fee model.”

“The other thing we can still work on is bringing competition. Promoting competition will bring this price down. We passed legislation, the President signed legislation that helps drive biosimilars and generics to market more efficiently.”

“I’ll just close one more time, just emphasizing that this committee needs to demand that the leader bring our PBM reform to the floor, but we need to include that delinking bill. There’s other opportunities to drive this price down. Again, Novo Nordisk is not the villain in the story.”

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