Trump has promised to cut the price of Ozempic to $150. Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly shares fell

US President Donald Trump has said that the price of the popular diabetes drug Ozempic will soon become much lower and could be around $150 a month. After his words, shares of Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk and its American competitor Eli Lilly, which produce best-selling weight-loss drugs, fell significantly. Analysts note that Trump's statement increased pressure on pharmaceutical companies and signals the administration's tough stance on drug prices.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the price of a one-month course of the popular overweight remedy Ozempic could drop to $150, Bloomberg reports.

Novo shares fell 5.5% in Copenhagen trading on Friday, October 17, the biggest drop since August. The company's securities have lost about 44% since the beginning of the year because of doubts about its ability to compete in the fast-growing market for weight-loss products, the agency said. Shares of Lilly, which sells similar drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, fell 3% in New York trading.

Trump's statements came during a White House event about his administration's agreement with Germany's Merck KGaA to lower the prices of fertility drugs in exchange for delaying the imposition of duties on pharmaceutical products, Bloomberg reports. Reporters asked the president to clarify the name of the drug, which he had previously touted as one that would become cheaper. "Did I mean Ozempic, or ... did I mean ... a weight-loss drug? ... They're going to cost a lot less," Reuters quoted Trump as saying. Asked about a timeline, he said prices would come down "pretty quickly."

According to Bloomberg, agreements to reduce drug prices have already been reached with Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and investors expect that similar measures could affect makers of weight loss products.

Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services - the U.S. federal agency that administers government health insurance programs for elderly and low-income citizens - later clarified that negotiations on the price of the injections were still ongoing. "We haven't discussed them yet," he said.

A Novo Nordisk spokesman told Reuters that the company is in talks with the administration over the Most Favored Nation Executive Order, a document that requires pharma manufacturers to reduce drug prices in the U.S. to the lowest prices in other developed countries. He added that the company is focused on improving patient access to its therapies, but would not comment directly on Trump's remarks, the agency wrote.

Now the official retail price of Ozempic is about $1000, but, as Bloomberg explains, drug price lists in the US rarely reflect the real cost to the consumer or the manufacturer's revenue. In particular, this is why Trump's agreements with Pfizer and AstraZeneca to reduce prices in exchange for tariff relief have had no tangible effect: the companies already provide significant discounts, the agency writes.

According to analyst Evan Siegerman of BMO Capital Markets, Trump's remarks "signal an aggressive stance" toward pharma companies. However, he notes, a possible price cut is unlikely to significantly affect Novo's business, since most patients with insurance already pay from $25 a month, and the actual price after discounts for insurance companies is 60-70% below retail.

However, insurance coverage for weight loss drugs is not easy to obtain, so consumers often choose to pay cash. Lilly offers Zepbound starting at $350 per month, while Novo's direct-pay program costs $499 for a one-month course of Ozempic or Wegovy for uninsured customers.

Novo has been negotiating to lower the cost of its drugs since Trump sent letters to 17 major pharmaceutical companies demanding lower prices for their drugs. The drugs Ozempic and its analog Wegovy were also included in the list of drugs on which consultations are underway under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bloomberg writes. The deadline for them is set for November 1, and the new, lower prices should come into effect in 2027, the agency specifies.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor