Ozempic’s Price Is Becoming Tougher for Novo Nordisk to Justify

Ozempic and Wegovy are making so much money for Novo Nordisk A/S that their cumulative sales will soon surpass the drugmaker’s entire research budget for the past three decades, undercutting a key argument for their unusually high prices.

The pair of medicines for diabetes and obesity have sold nearly $50 billion as of the second quarter and are on track to make $65 billion by the end of this year, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of regulatory filings and analyst estimates. After adjusting for inflation, that would eclipse the $68 billion that Novo will have spent on all research and development since the mid-1990s, when the company started ...