Novo ' s Ills Are Indicative of Something Other Than A Free Market for Insulin

As I ' ve already addressed, a few weeks ago (see my post athttp://blog.sstrumello.com/2016/08/the-business-of-diabetes-cvs-caremarks_5.html for more), Novo Nordisk ' s CEO Lars Rebien Sorensen rather unceremoniously announced he was retiring early (see http://fortune.com/2016/09/01/novo-nordisk-ceo-retire-insulin/ for more) which was kind of an acknowledgement that the era of easy price increases for its products in the U.S. is over. Already, CVS Caremark and United Health announced that they are dropping Sanofi ' s Lantus in favor of biosimilar versions from Lilly/Boehringer or Merck/Samsung, and there ' s reason to presume that biosimilars will pressure Novo ' s products even more. This week, Novo also announced it was taking the very rare step of laying off approximately 1,000 employees, something the Danish company has almost never done, including about 500 people in its R&D department.When a reporter asked him if that meant the company was cutting into the bone of the company, rather than the fat, the response he gave was rather interesting:" The next line of products have to have an even greater height of innovation, which means those that do not have that height of innovation will have to be culled, " Soerensen said. " Otherwise, it ' s going to be difficult for us to get reimbursement for our drugs. Me-too or me-better drugs will not be good enough in the future and hence we need to prioritize. "That kind of sounds like an acknowledgement (to ...
Source: Scott's Web Log - Category: Endocrinology Tags: 2016 Biosimilar generic insulin Novo Nordis PBM prices Source Type: blogs