Hims & Hers falls after Novo Nordisk launches discounted Wegovy for uninsured
The reduced price for Wegovy is still roughly double what compounded versions cost.
Hims & Hers shares fell and Novo Nordisk shares rose after the drugmaker announced Wednesday morning that it launched a telehealth platform, NovoCare, designed to give uninsured patients access to Wegovy, its blockbuster weight-loss drug.
Novo Nordisk, the Danish drugmaker that makes popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, said NovoCare will allow patients without insurance to access their drugs directly at almost a third of the cost it typically charges insurers. This comes after the Food and Drug Administration declared on February 21 that the shortage of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic, is over, ending the allowance for copycat pharmacies like Hims & Hers to sell exact copies.
Hims & Hers has said its game plan moving forward is to sell Novo Nordisk’s older, less effective GLP-1 drugs and oral medications.
NovoCare will offer Wegovy for $499 a month for patients without insurance. While that is more affordable than the upward of $1,300 Novo Nordisk charges patients with insurance, it’s still more than double what the compounded versions cost.
That said, Wegovy comes in individual pens that are prefilled with the patient’s dose. Compounding pharmacies typically send a vial and the patient is responsible for administering the dose. That makes Wegovy (and similar GLP-1 drugs) more costly to produce than compounded versions.
Eli Lilly, which makes competing GLP-1 drugs, announced a similar platform dubbed Lilly Direct that offers its drugs to insured patients at similar price points as NovoCare. (Hims & Hers has never sold copycat versions of Eli Lilly’s drugs, though other compounding pharmacies have.)
Compounding pharmacies have been a pain in the side of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, chipping away at the edges of their market share for GLP-1 drugs. The pharmaceutical giants have launched ad campaigns questioning the safety of compounded drugs.