Several months after unveiling its direct-to-consumer NovoCare Pharmacy service with the launch of a $499 cash-pay option for a monthly supply of Wegovy, Novo Nordisk is expanding the discount to include its other GLP-1 heavyweight.
Eligible self-paying patients with Type 2 diabetes will now be able to purchase their prescribed Ozempic for $499 per month, the Danish pharma announced Monday. The lower-cost doses—coming in at half the med’s list price of about $1,000—will be available for home delivery via NovoCare and from traditional pharmacies through a collaboration with GoodRx.
The new Ozempic offering was driven by Novo’s desire to reach “as many people as possible” and address their unmet needs, Kevin Donahoe, head of the company’s diabetes marketing, said in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing.
“Even though Ozempic has very high insurance coverage, and Type 2 diabetes is well-covered, the opportunity to reach more people and to offer Ozempic at $499—it was clear to us that’s what we’re pursuing,” Donahoe said.
The offer will be added to Novo’s current communications for Ozempic, without changing the overall consumer marketing strategy for the med, he noted.
“We have high consumer awareness, high consumer demand, and it’s because of that awareness and because of that demand that we want to make Ozempic more available and more affordable,” he said.
The executive declined to share specific sales or prescription figures that Novo is forecasting from the addition of Ozempic to the NovoCare suite. He noted that the corresponding offering in obesity has so far made up “about 10%” of Wegovy sales, but suggested that the numbers may not be quite as high for Ozempic.
“We believe that because Type 2 diabetes is pretty well covered, the unmet need is not as high, but we do believe that people who face high out-of-pocket costs need more options,” Donahoe said. “We’re very excited because we know there’s a need out there, and we’re going to be studying the results to find out what we can do to help.”
The launch comes shortly after President Donald Trump sent letters to several Big Pharma CEOs at the end of July demanding that they ramp up direct-to-consumer drug sales as part of his “Most Favored Nation” order to reduce U.S. prescription drug prices.
Donahoe said the move to add Ozempic to the NovoCare DTC service is “separate” from that order, pointing to NovoCare’s launch back in March—well before Trump signed the MFN order in May—and reiterating, “I think it’s all of us looking at the same unmet needs and trying to help as many people as possible.”
The new offering also arrives as Novo fends off competition from compounders, who continue to sell knockoff versions of semaglutide despite the company’s many warnings against it.
“We believe that if even a single patient feels the need to turn to potentially unsafe and unapproved knockoff alternatives, that’s one too many,” Dave Moore, Novo’s executive VP of U.S. operations, said in this week’s launch announcement.
During a second-quarter earnings call earlier this month, then-CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said the market for compounded semaglutide in the U.S. is currently about equal to that of Novo’s GLP-1 business, with an estimated 1 million patients now using compounded versions of the med.
While diabetes and obesity care sales grew 18% in the first half of 2025, that marked a slowdown from previous periods, and Novo in late July reduced its full-year forecasts largely due to the slowing growth of Ozempic and Wegovy sales in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Novo is also facing increased pressure from GLP-1 competitor Eli Lilly. Following a similar pattern to Novo, Lilly moved first to offer obesity med Zepbound to self-paying patients at a discount well below list price through its own LillyDirect service last year, though it has yet to add its Ozempic rival, Type 2 diabetes drug Mounjaro, to the DTC platform.