Nordic Life Science asked Nikolaj Sørensen, CEO of Orexo, about his opinion on the ongoing U.S. drug pricing debate.

Sørensen said that historically U.S. drug pricing has been recognized to be much more attractive than European drug pricing. And this is still the truth for pharmaceuticals without competition, which has led to some of the obscene price increases we have seen recently in the U.S.

“From a personal perspective I find the system in the U.S. to be very ineffective, as a significant share of the revenues generated by a certain pharmaceutical is going to insurance companies and pharmacy benefit manages (PBM) and the value of the rebates rarely transform to lower prices for the patients.”

”However for products in classes with other products with similar therapeutic properties and in particular with generic products, the price pressure is immense. In Europe we are often mislead with official prices in the U.S. are significantly higher than in Europe, but we miss the rebates pharmaceutical companies pay to insurance companies. The net price received by the pharmaceutical companies is in many categories today below the net price in many European countries. From a personal perspective I find the system in the U.S. to be very ineffective, as a significant share of the revenues generated by a certain pharmaceutical is going to insurance companies and pharmacy benefit manages (PBM) and the value of the rebates rarely transform to lower prices for the patients,” he says.

Photo of Nikolaj Sørensen: Jenny Öhman

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