The chief executive of the drugmaker Novo Nordisk, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, is scheduled to face tough questions Tuesday on Capitol Hill about the high costs of the company’s widely popular weight-loss drugs.
Jørgensen will appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions during a livestreamed hearing Tuesday starting at 10 a.m. ET.
The head of the committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has been vocal about his frustrations over how much Novo Nordisk charges Americans for both Ozempic (used to treat type 2 diabetes) and Wegovy (approved for weight loss).
“In general, we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Same exact medicine sold in Canada, Europe is a fraction of what it is in the United States,” Sanders said in an interview Monday. “The result of that is that hundreds of thousands of people in this country who desperately need this product will not be able to afford it.”
I don’t know what to say to that. It’s like futurama’s solution to climate change. We know the problem, but it would be too hard and take too long to fix it, so let’s just do this short term solution and let the next few generations figure it out? Screw what effects it might cause to millions that might be allergic, or to millions who it does not work on. This shouldn’t be a stopgap to fixing issues.