Trump’s $150 Ozempic? Oz cautions it’s not a done deal, but patients and doctors say it could be a gamechanger
By Meg Tirrell, CNN
(CNN) — Janet McCaskill was on vacation in Arizona with her husband and best friend when she heard that President Donald Trump had suggested he might be able to bring the cost of popular weight-loss drugs down to $150 a month.
“The thought of it going to $150 a month is dramatic,” said McCaskill, a grandmother from North Carolina who’s lost 100 pounds with the help of GLP-1 medicines, a class best known for the diabetes drug Ozempic. “That is most fantastic – if it comes to pass.”
Trump planted the idea Thursday in an Oval Office news conference about an entirely different set of drugs – those for in vitro fertilization – before his Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, stepped in to warn it wasn’t a done deal.
Nonetheless, Trump’s comments made waves. Patients who’ve struggled to afford the pricey medicines shared hope the price could be reached. Doctors called it “huge for patients,” if true. And in a sign that Wall Street took it seriously, stocks of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, the makers of GLP-1 drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, fell significantly, wiping out tens of billions of dollars in the companies’ market values.
It’s just not clear it’ll actually happen.
An awkward moment in the Oval
It started with a familiar refrain from the president, who’s previously lamented the cost difference of weight-loss drugs in Europe compared with the US.
“In London, you’d buy a certain drug for $130 … and in New York, you pay $1,300 for the same thing,” Trump said in opening remarks of his IVF announcement Thursday. “So now we’re going to be paying, instead of $1,300, you’ll be paying about $150.”
A reporter, Max Bayer of Endpoints News, made the connection, asking later if Trump was referring to bringing weight-loss drugs down to $150. The president confirmed he was “referring to Ozempic, or the fat-loss drug … they’ll be much lower.”
At that point, Dr. Oz started to look uncomfortable, stepping up to the podium with a subtle shaking of his head.
“We have not negotiated those yet,” Oz clarified. “We’re going to be rolling these out over time.”
It didn’t take long for Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly’s stocks to react, each dropping about 4% in after hours trading Thursday and maintaining losses through trading on Friday. A Wall Street analyst, Evan Seigerman of BMO Capital Markets, sought to assuage investor fears of coming price cuts in a research note Thursday evening that called Trump’s remarks “aggressive posturing amidst negotiations.”
The drug companies were tight-lipped. Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic and its weight-loss counterpart, Wegovy, told CNN that the company “has engaged in discussions” with the Trump administration about drug pricing in the context of the president’s Most Favored Nation executive order, an approach that dictates the US shouldn’t pay more for medicines than the lowest price offered to peer nations.
Medicines are routinely sold at markedly higher prices in the US than other countries, including diabetes and weight-loss drugs: Ozempic is priced 10 times higher in the US than France, according to a 2023 analysis from Peterson-KFF.
“We remain focused on improving patient access and affordability, and we will continue to work to find solutions that help people access the medication they need,” a Novo Nordisk spokeswoman said.
A spokesman for Eli Lilly, which makes Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss, said the company is “not aware of any specific price commitments,” and that it’s “in discussions with the administration to further expand patient access, preserve innovation and promote affordability for our medicines.”
‘Most Favored Nation’ drug prices
The president has announced deals with Pfizer, AstraZeneca and EMD Serono in the past month under the Most Favored Nation framework, and has promised more to come. The deals so far have included an offering of medicines at Most Favored Nation prices to Medicaid – a system that already receives heavy discounts – as well as deals on certain drugs that can be purchased directly by consumers, without insurance, through a new platform called TrumpRx.
In return, drugmakers have won reprieves from the threat of tariffs, as long as they continue to invest in manufacturing and research in the US.
Thus far, the deals have appeared neutral or positive to pharmaceutical companies, with Pfizer’s stock rising the day of its announcement and buoying competitors along with it. The agreements, Seigerman wrote, “have been far from a sweeping implementation of US pricing cuts.”
The drugs Pfizer and the White House noted would be offered through the TrumpRx program don’t appear to be used very often in the US, face generic competition in the near future, or carry such high list prices that even steep discounts for cash-paying patients would leave the medicines unaffordable for most people, said Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
GLP-1 medications, though, so-called for a hormone they mimic, are used by millions of Americans, and “if you look at the barriers to using them, cost is the number one thing,” said Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.
From thousands to hundreds
The medicines are all priced, before insurance or discounts, at about $1,000 a month or more in the US. With commercial insurance coverage, many patients pay as little as $25 out of pocket. But coverage can be thorny, especially for weight loss, and some insurers are reducing coverage.
McCaskill experienced that firsthand. She started using Mounjaro in late 2022 to try to lose weight, and had such strong results, she credits the medicine with saving her life. But her insurance didn’t cover it, and it was so expensive she switched to a compounded version made by a local pharmacy.
Compounders typically make drugs that require personalization, like if a patient is allergic to a certain ingredient or needs other modifications made. But law also allows compounding when medicines are in shortage, and GLP-1 manufacturers had trouble meeting outsized demand for several years, opening up an entire market of off-brand, compounded GLP-1s.
Though the shortages have now ended, some purveyors still offer compounded versions of the medicines, at much lower prices than Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly – even after the companies introduced cash pay discounted options.
McCaskill said she switched to a Lilly program that allowed her to buy its weight-loss drug, Zepbound, directly at at discount after her local compounding pharmacy stopped selling the medication. But it costs her about $500 a month. Her best friend, Kay Powell, a nurse, is also on one of the medicines, but gets a compounded version through another pharmacy she trusts for $150.
“I’m moving back to the compound just as soon as I can get to my doctor next week,” McCaskill told CNN Friday.
“We’re price shopping,” Powell added. “We’re going to buy it wherever it’s most affordable.”
‘A big however’
The White House and US Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to inquiries from CNN about Trump’s $150 promise from the Oval Office.
And doctors, analysts and policy researchers were skeptical they’d reach a $150 deal – or even what that might mean.
Trump’s comments may be “more to get these guys to make a deal than to actually get the price to $150 over the short term,” said Jared Holz, a health care strategist for financial firm Mizuho Securities USA. “Everything that comes out of this administration seems like it’s a precursor to some sort of transaction.”
Dr. William Feldman, a physician and health policy researcher at UCLA, pointed out Novo Nordisk is also in negotiations with Oz’s CMS over pricing of semaglutide – the generic name of Ozempic and Wegovy – for Medicare, under a framework laid out in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. He noted it’s not clear if a $150 monthly price would be part of those negotiations or a broader agreement outside them.
“$150 a month gets closer to prices for semaglutide in other parts of the world and even to prices for compounded versions in the US,” he told CNN by email Friday. “This could be a boon for patients and could drive increased uptake in the US. However – and this is a big however – I’d like to see more details.”
Dr. Jody Dushay, an attending physician in endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said she refers patients to both Lilly and Novo Nordisk for their self-pay options when they don’t have insurance coverage, but pointed out “for many patients $500 a month is still totally unaffordable.”
She urges patients to steer clear of compounded products, though, “due to lack of regulation and unknown safety and efficacy.”
If the branded versions were priced at $150 a month, access “would greatly increase,” said Dr. Jorge Moreno, an obesity specialist and assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine. “Even more patients would be willing and able to afford paying” for them.
Even an out-of-pocket cost “would still pose some financial barriers,” said Dr. David Kim, an assistant professor of medicine and public health sciences at the University of Chicago. Vanderbilt’s Dusetzina pointed out “prior research has shown that once the prices reach $100 per month, many people do not fill their medicines.”
260 pounds all together
Affording GLP-1 medicines can make people feel desperate at their current prices and without insurance coverage, McCaskill said, especially as she’s seen not just dramatic weight loss but improvements in her cholesterol and other health markers.
“Between the three of us, we’ve probably lost – what – 260 pounds?” Powell added, including McCaskill’s husband, Barry, in the tally.
They all said they’d switch to the branded versions, away from the compounded ones, if they were offered at comparable prices.
“It’s the real thing,” Barry said. “No question.”
CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled Bayer’s last name.
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