Ozempic Could Bankrupt US Health Care

That's the verdict of a new report from the Senate HELP Committee

There’s enormous money to be made from new weight-loss drugs. When I say “enormous,” I really mean it. ENORMOUS. Like, more money than most countries, including prosperous Western countries, have in their entire economies.

Just look at Novo Nordisk. The manufacturer of Wegovy/Ozempic, is now valued at $570 billion. That’s $200 billion more than the economy of the company’s home nation, Denmark.

It’s no surprise, then, that Novo, with a $2.3 billion tax bill, is basically keeping the entire Danish economy afloat. While other EU nations stagnate, with basically zero growth, Novo and its annual tax bill have pushed the Danish economy to 4% growth. According to a recent article in Fortune, the spoils of semaglutide “drove record government spending on defense, the green transition and support for Ukraine.”

“Little in Denmark can escape Novo’s gravitational pull,” says Fortune.

“Its agenda influences educational and research priorities, and politicians consider the company’s perspective before making decisions on immigration policy or new infrastructure development. The drugmaker has created thousands of jobs in the six-million-person country—and more will come as Novo expands across multiple locations—but even citizens with no ties to the firm benefit from its gains. Danish pension funds are flush from record returns on Novo shares, and mortgages are cheaper as booming diabetes drug exports have forced Denmark’s central bank to keep interest rates low.”

There’s a dark side, of course, to tying the health of a national economy to the profits of just a single company, and the Fortune article goes into detail about the risks Denmark is taking by banking so heavily on Novo Nordisk.

Remember what they say about eggs and baskets.

As far as I can see, there are no indications that the Ozempic money is going to do anything other than grow. There are a billion obese people worldwide, and Novo is selling its “wonder drug” to just a small fraction of them at present. This is the beginning.

In one version of the future, Novo Nordisk is the world’s biggest company. I think that’s the future we’re going to get, and soon. You can bookmark that prediction.

The real dark side of the economics of drugs like Ozempic is seen, rather, in the most overweight nations of the developed world, and in particular in the US, where the drug is being taken up by an ever greater proportion of the 40% of adults who are obese. 12% of adults in the US have now used a weight-loss drug like Ozempic, and that figure will only increase. Novo and other companies like Eli Lilly, with their competitor Mounjaro, will make sure of it, through lobbying and ad campaigns.