The administrator of the North Carolina State Health Plan, which provides health care coverage for government and school and college workers and retirees, is still battling with drug companies over the cost of weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic.
State Treasurer Dale Folwell said he has tried several times to negotiate with Nova Nordisk, Eli Lilly and the plan’s pharmacy benefit manager.
"And they were making these claims about how much we will save through the use of this product,” he said, “And I said, well, we know a little bit about finance at the Treasurer's office, if you will guarantee those savings and finance those savings at .5% for the next 20 years on a fixed basis, yeah, we'll take that deal.”
However, he said in those negotiations the drugmakers refused to focus on anything other than how well the medicines work.
"There's a benefit anytime any of us lose weight, but when getting the opportunity to actually put their money where their mouth is and finance those savings back to the state health plan because we don't get to finance the cost of this drug. We have to pay for it. They didn't have any interest in that.”
Folwell said it “defies logic” that Novo Nordisk can sell the exact same product in the Netherlands for $296 per month and in the United States for more than $800 per month.
"When we're spending more on this drug than we're spending on cancer treatment drugs at the state health plan that I should tell you how significant this is,” he said.
The State Health Plan covered 25,000 prescriptions for weight-loss drugs at the start of the year, but Folwell said covering the drugs as priced was too much for the state health plan to pay.
Trustees for the North Carolina State Health Plan voted in January to implement a moratorium on coverage of the weight loss drugs. They will still be covered for the treatment of diabetes.
Folwell said it was projected that the weight loss shots would cost the plan about $170 million – equal to a 4% bonus to one-quarter of a million retirees on the state pension plan.
