By Nikolaj Skydsgaard
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Novo Nordisk on Wednesday rejected allegations by a U.S. parliament investigative committee that it has engaged in manoeuvres to increase net prices on life-saving insulin in tandem with its competitors on the U.S. insulin market.
The report, released in December by the House Oversight Committee, the main investigative body of the U.S. House of Representatives, alleged Novo had increased prices on its insulin drugs to the detriment of diabetes patients between 2001 and 2019.
Referring to Novo Nordisk and rival drugmakers Eli Lilly and Sanofi, which own some 90% of the U.S. insulin market, the report cited internal documents saying they had “intentionally and strategically raised their prices in lockstep.”
“We have nothing to hide, we feel we have done business in the right way in the U.S,” Novo’s Chief Executive Lars Joergensen said on Wednesday, denying his firm had engaged in such activities.
“Our net pricing is actually declining quite significantly,” Jorgensen said. “For quite some years pricing has been going down on insulin, not going up.”
The report contained graphs showing how Novo has raised the price on its rapid-acting insulin Novolog by 628% since 2001 by hiking the price 28 times. The price hikes happened in almost perfect lockstep with rival Eli Lilly’s Humalog insulin product.
Similarly, Novo raised its prices for its long-acting insulin Levemir drug 18 times, by a total of 360% between 2006 and 2019. This happened in tandem with Sanofi’s price hikes on its Lantus product.
“As companies raised prices on their drugs, internal data shows that net prices – prices after accounting for all discounts and rebates – also increased for most of the drugs,” the U.S. report stated.
“Net prices for all of the drugs examined are significantly higher today than at launch,” it added.
But in its annual report released on Wednesday, Novo said net prices on its insulin product portfolio in the U.S. have decreased by double digit percentages every year since 2017.
Novo was not immediately able to provide numbers on net price developments before 2017, when contacted by Reuters.
Novo is currently defending itself against eight lawsuits in the United States, which are related to its pricing of diabetes medicine, according to its annual report. Eli Lilly and Sanofi are also defendants in those cases.
(Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; editing by David Evans)
