CVS to spice up access to weight reduction drug Wegovy for Caremark patients

CVS Health on Thursday said it can significantly expand access to the blockbuster weight reduction drug Wegovy for patients covered by its pharmacy profit manager, Caremark. 

Starting July 1, Caremark will prioritize Wegovy on its formularies — or lists of covered drugs — making it the popular GLP-1 drug for obesity. The move is an element of a brand new partnership between Caremark and Wegovy’s manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, in accordance with CVS’ first-quarter earnings release.

Shares of Novo Nordisk rose greater than 3% on Thursday after the announcement, while Eli Lilly’s stock fell 5%.

It comes as Novo Nordisk works to spice up access to Wegovy now that it is not any longer in brief supply within the U.S. Partnering with Caremark, one in every of the nation’s largest pharmacy profit managers, could help the drugmaker reach much more patients.

Caremark discounts drugs with manufacturers on behalf of insurance policy and creates lists of medicines, or formularies, which are covered by insurance and reimburses pharmacies for prescriptions.

Caremark will make the drug available to its members at “a cheaper price.” The PBM negotiated a lower net price for Wegovy over its rival, Eli Lilly‘s weight reduction drug Zepbound, on its foremost formularies, offering savings to clients that opt into those plans, a CVS spokesperson told CNBC.

But Caremark’s clients, that are employers and unions, “individually determine how much of that savings on Wegovy gets shared with its members either via lower premiums or lower copays on the pharmacy counter,” the spokesperson said. 

Individually, any patient who doesn’t have insurance coverage for Wegovy or one other GLP-1 can still buy Novo Nordisk’s drug out-of-pocket for $499 at any of CVS’ 9,000 pharmacies nationwide, the spokesperson added. 

In its earnings release, CVS said it’s the primary retail pharmacy partnering with Novo Nordisk’s latest direct-to-consumer online pharmacy, NovoCare, to dispense Wegovy to patients with prescriptions. NovoCare offers Wegovy at that cheaper price point to cash-paying patients, who may struggle to shoulder the drug’s roughly $1,000 list price before insurance and other rebates.

Caremark may even mix Wegovy with additional lifestyle support, resembling personalized nutrition plans, as a part of the CVS Weight Management program.

The announcement comes because the Danish drugmaker races to capture more patients now that many compounding pharmacies are legally restricted from making cheaper, unapproved versions of Wegovy, with rare exceptions.

Dave Moore, Novo Nordisk’s executive vp of U.S. operations, said in a separate release that “it’s our responsibility to proceed to work with others across the US healthcare system to seek out modern opportunities to fulfill the needs of those patients and connect them with authentic, FDA-approved Wegovy … in a convenient and inexpensive way.”