{"id":324899,"date":"2025-12-01T22:49:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T22:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324899\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T22:49:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T22:49:14","slug":"competition-not-price-controls-just-slashed-glp-1-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324899\/","title":{"rendered":"Competition, not price controls, just slashed GLP-1 prices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novo Nordisk\u00a0just announced<\/a>\u00a0price cuts for Ozempic<\/a> and Wegovy, whose list prices as recently as last year were\u00a0around $1,000 a month<\/a>.\u00a0Patients buying directly from the manufacturer will be able to pay as little as $349 for a monthly dose of these medicines<\/a>. The company has also dropped prices for new direct-pay customers to just $199 for the first two months.<\/p>\n

Why slash prices on blockbuster drugs? One word: competition. Its biggest rival in the GLP-1 market, Eli Lilly, has been seizing market share. Novo is looking to win customers back. Cutting prices is the most obvious way to achieve that goal.<\/p>\n

Proponents of price controls<\/a> take note: Competition leads to lower prices without the harmful effects of government coercion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the last few years, both parties have advanced aggressive reforms aimed at artificially capping the prices of brand-name drugs. The Democrats\u2019\u00a0Inflation Reduction Act<\/a>\u00a0of 2022 gave the federal government enormous new powers effectively to name its price for a host of medicines purchased through Medicare Part D starting in 2026.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has called for<\/a> drug firms to sell their medicines to Americans at a \u201cmost favored nation\u201d\u00a0price, the lowest price offered in other developed countries.<\/p>\n

Both assume that government must dictate drug prices if they\u2019re to be affordable for average Americans. Novo\u2019s move shows the market can do it faster.<\/p>\n

The company is facing serious competition in the GLP-1 market. Indianapolis-based Lilly reported that it had\u00a057.9% of the market in the most recent quarter, while Novo had 41.7%<\/a>. Lilly\u2019s Zepbound has overtaken Wegovy as the\u00a0most commonly prescribed GLP-1<\/a>\u00a0in the country.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only reasonable that Novo would react to this situation by cutting its prices in hopes of taking some customers from Lilly. It\u2019s also a classic example of how quickly market competition can drive down prices, while also incentivizing companies to keep developing better, more innovative products.\u00a0In the end, patients win.<\/p>\n

The same can\u2019t be said for government price controls. These policies might bring down prices in the short term. But the harm they inflict far outweighs any temporary savings.<\/p>\n

When the government imposes price controls on drugs, pharmaceutical companies\u2019 revenues shrink. Investors are less interested in funding the development of products whose potential return is capped. Research budgets decline. The result is a marked reduction in the number of state-of-the-art medicines reaching the market.<\/p>\n

ONE IN 8 ADULTS HAS USED OZEMPIC OR SIMILAR GLP-1 DRUGS<\/a><\/p>\n

This scenario is already playing out. Research shows that drug companies are\u00a0already scaling back<\/a>\u00a0post-approval trials for small-molecule oncology drugs. They\u2019re reasonably concluding that investing in additional research may not pay off if their drugs could get ensnared by price controls.<\/p>\n

A competitive drug market strongly encourages companies to best their rivals by developing the next generation of life-saving therapies. And as Novo and Lilly are proving, it can also save patients money.<\/p>\n

Sally C.\u00a0Pipes\u00a0is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is\u00a0The World\u2019s Medicine Chest: How America Achieved Pharmaceutical Supremacy \u2014 and How to Keep It\u00a0(Encounter 2025). Follow her on X @sallypipes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novo Nordisk\u00a0just announced\u00a0price cuts for Ozempic and Wegovy, whose list prices as recently as last year were\u00a0around $1,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[28,2605,97,253,243,1767,249,3123],"class_list":{"0":"post-324899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-drugs","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-medication","13":"tag-opinion","14":"tag-ozempic","15":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}