Public spending on prescription medications in Canada grew by more than 9 per cent in 2024, with one drug driving the increase more than any other: Ozempic. <\/p>\n
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) published a new analysis<\/a> on Tuesday showing that taxpayer-funded drug plans shelled out $20.1-billion on prescription drugs in 2024, up 9.3 per cent from nearly $18.4-billion the year before. <\/p>\n That\u2019s the highest annual growth rate in public drug spending in 20 years, according to CIHI, the country\u2019s health data agency. <\/p>\n CIHI said Ozempic, a treatment for Type 2 diabetes, was responsible for 8.5 per cent of the total growth in 2024, the last year for which data are available. <\/p>\n However, that\u2019s lower than the previous year, when Ozempic fueled nearly 20 per cent of a 6.7-per-cent increase in government spending on prescribed drugs. <\/p>\n What will change in Canada when generic Ozempic hits the market, according to our reporters<\/a><\/p>\n Individual drugs don\u2019t often have such a dramatic impact on the bottom line of public drug plans, according to Tracy Johnson, CIHI\u2019s director of health spending. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s happened before, but it\u2019s rare,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n The CIHI analysis shows that governments in Canada spent $794.1-million on Ozempic, also known as semaglutide, in 2024. That\u2019s up from $130.5-million in 2020, when far fewer Canadians took the medication. <\/p>\n The CIHI analysis was published just over two months after Canada became the first country where generic versions of semaglutide are legal, although Health Canada has yet to approve any of the cheaper duplicates. Six drugmakers have applications<\/a> pending, one of which was submitted more than two years ago. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery month we spend waiting for a generic is a month that our public plans are paying more than they will in the future for these drugs,\u201d said Michael Law, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences and the academic director of the Centre for Health Policy at the University of Calgary. <\/p>\n The Canadian researcher whose discovery led to Ozempic is still making breakthroughs<\/a><\/p>\n The Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association, a lobby group representing generic drug makers, has raised concerns about how long the federal regulator is taking to make decisions on copies of semaglutide and other generics. <\/p>\n In the case of semaglutide, Health Canada told<\/a> The Globe and Mail in January that the review process is more \u201ccomplex\u201d than for typical generics because the original semaglutide is a biologic drug derived from cells. Generic companies are applying to make chemically synthesized copies. <\/p>\n Government drug plans across Canada are facing Ozempic-driven cost increases despite the limitations they\u2019ve placed on covering glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s,) the wildly popular class to which Ozempic belongs.<\/p>\n Public plans don\u2019t cover Wegovy, a version of semaglutide sold explicitly for weight loss, or tirzepatide, a newer GLP-1 marketed as Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight management. <\/p>\n Provinces and territories only cover Ozempic for people with Type 2 diabetes, and most stipulate that patients first try older drugs such as metformin. <\/p>\n