On June 18th, the Senate Health Committee will vote on whether to subpoena Doug Langa, Novo Nordisk’s Executive Vice President of US Markets, to testify at a hearing on high drug prices.

According to an announcement from Bernie Sanders, who chairs the committee, they want answers as to why Novo charges up to ten to fifteen times more for the diabetes 2 drug Ozempic and weight loss drug Wegovy in the US than in other countries.

In May, Sanders also criticized Novo in a column in Danish daily Politiken.

Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, CEO of Novo, has rejected the criticism on several occasions and also did so last month to Politiken.

”We share Bernie Sanders’ ambition to reach as many people in the US as possible, but the healthcare systems around the world are very different and we need to participate in the American system.”

”We bring our product to the market and negotiate with the stakeholders there are to negotiate with in the US, and it doesn’t make sense just to compare list prices, because there are big discounts in the US healthcare system,” Fruergaard Jørgensen told the newspaper.

English edit: Catherine Brett