Wegovy and Ozempic are weight loss drugs that promise to transform the treatment of obesity, heart disease and other chronic conditions that afflict millions of Americans. But while everyone agrees these drugs have the potential to transform lives, no one can agree on how best to pay for them. Wegovy sells for a list price ' or price before discounts ' of $1,349 per month in the U.S. The same drug lists for $265 in Canada and less than half of that in the U.K. These dramatic differences illustrate a larger issue: The list price of patented drugs in the U.S. are far higher than in other rich countries. As a health economist who writes about innovations in the health sector, I have spent a good portion of the past five years thinking about these questions. What I've learned is that high list prices for drugs don't tell us much about who is screwing whom. To truly understand the problem of drug pricing in the U.S., you need to start with the tricky economics of the PBMs, or pharmacy...
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