The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Tuesday announced price cuts for 15 prescription drugs under Medicare, including Novo Nordisk's diabetes therapy Ozempic, and its weight loss counterpart Wegovy. The two drugs should see their prices drop by 71 percent in 2026 through the Medicare drug price negotiation program created under the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden in 2022. The reductions are expected to save Medicare $12 billion according to CMS.
As shown in our infographic, based on data compiled by Statista, the revenue of Ozempic has grown rapidly since it was first commercialised in 2018, going from around $280 million that year to close to $18 billion in 2024. Ozempic quickly overtook some of its competitors, including Januvia, from German pharmaceutical company Merck, which saw its revenue drop from $3.7 billion in 2017 to $1.3 billion last year. AstraZeneca's Farxiga saw its revenue grow slowly between 2017 and 2020, then more rapidly from 2021, while Eli Lilly's diabetes therapy Trulicity's revenue grew steadily between 2017 and 2022, before decreasing in 2023 and 2024.
Diabetes is a chronic disease characterised by excess sugar in the blood (hyperglycaemia), either because the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or because the body does not use the insulin it produces properly. There are two types of diabetes: type 1 diabetes is autoimmune and irreversible and usually appears suddenly in childhood or adolescence, while type 2 diabetes (which affects 92 percent of diabetics) develops over several years.
According to the United Nations, the number of people with diabetes has almost quadrupled since 1980, and the prevalence of the disease continues to rise, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. In the U.S., the CDC recorded 38.4 million people affected by diabetes in 2021, which represents 11.6 percent of the total population.
