To Balance Roaring Demand, Novo Is Rationing Ozempic Starter Kits

Reuters: Novo Rations Ozempic Starter Kits Amid Surge In Use For Weight Loss
Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) will ration starter kits of Ozempic in Europe and reduce supplies of another diabetes drug, Victoza, to prioritise producing Ozempic, which has seen a surge in demand from people using it to lose weight. Ozempic contains semaglutide, an ingredient in Novo's hugely popular anti-obesity drug Wegovy. Ozempic is not officially approved to treat obesity, but that hasn't held back demand. (Burger and Mathews, 11/21)

Reuters: Medtronic Shrugs Off Concerns Over Newer Weight-Loss Drugs, Raises Annual Forecast
Medtronic (MDT.N) raised its annual earnings forecast on Tuesday as strong sales in its surgical and diabetes units allayed concerns about the impact of new diabetes and weight-loss drugs on long-term growth, sending its shares up nearly 4% in morning trade. Makers of medical products used in bariatric surgery and glucose-monitoring devices have been trying to ease investor concerns over a potential hit to demand from the rising popularity of new GLP-1 drugs like Novo Nordisk's (NOVOb.CO) Ozempic and Eli Lilly's (LLY.N) Mounjaro. (Mandowara and Santhosh, 11/21)

In other industry developments —

The Boston Globe: Merck & Co. Buys Caraway Therapeutics
Merck & Co. has agreed to pay as much as $610 million to buy Caraway Therapeutics, a small, privately owned Cambridge biotech working on potential drugs for neurodegenerative and rare diseases. The total includes an undisclosed upfront payment and payments contingent on reaching goals for developing medicines to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, ALS, and rare kidney diseases. (Saltzman, 11/21)

Reuters: Monsanto Hit With $165 Million Verdict Over PCBs In Seattle School
A U.S. jury has ordered Bayer's Monsanto to pay $165 million to employees of a school northeast of Seattle who claimed chemicals made by the company called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, leaked from light fixtures and got them sick. The Washington state court jury found the company liable for selling products containing PCBs used in the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington, that were not safe, and did not include adequate warnings. The award included nearly $50 million in compensatory damages, and $115 million in punitive damages. (Mindock, 11/21)

Modern Healthcare: Epic To Receive Payout From 2014 Tata Trade Secrets Lawsuit
Electronic health record giant Epic Systems will receive about $125 million in court-awarded payments from Tata Consultancy Services,  the Mumbai, India-based information-technology and consulting firm said in a regulatory filing Tuesday. In 2014, Verona, Wisconsin-based Epic alleged Tata illegally accessed Epic Systems' internal documents as Tata sought to enter the U.S. EHR market. (Turner, 11/21)

Reuters: European Patent Office Declares Moderna MRNA Patent Invalid
The European Patent Office declared a contested mRNA patent owned by Moderna (MRNA.O) invalid, the office said on Tuesday, handing a win to BioNTech (22UAy.DE) and its partner Pfizer (PFE.N) in a patent dispute between the two coronavirus vaccine makers. Moderna said in a statement that it disagreed with the office's decision and would lodge an appeal. Shares in Moderna were down 2.3% in premarket trading on Wall Street after the decision was announced by BioNTech earlier on Tuesday. (11/21)

The Wall Street Journal: Foot Locker, Teamsters Show Their Drug-Benefit Managers The Door
Employers and unions are getting fed up with the firms they have used for years to help control their spending on prescription drugs—because their costs keep soaring. Footwear retailer Foot Locker dropped UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx drug-benefit manager last year, while a Teamsters fund in Philadelphia recently reupped with its replacement for CVS Health’s Caremark. (Evans, 11/21)

Stat: Morphosys Mixed Study Results For Blood Cancer Drug
An experimental blood cancer drug from MorphoSys hit its primary target in a pivotal trial, the company announced late Monday, but the drug faltered in addressing patient symptoms, causing the company’s stock to fall in early Tuesday trading. (Joseph and Feuerstein, 11/21)

Modern Healthcare: Mount Sinai Health System Names Brendan Carr As Next CEO
Mount Sinai Health System has named Dr. Brendan Carr as its next chief executive, effective early next year. Carr is a professor of emergency medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and chair of emergency medicine at the New York-based health system. He joined nonprofit Mount Sinai in February 2020. (Hudson, 11/21)

Also —

KFF Health News: Why Long-Term Care Insurance Falls Short For So Many
For 35 years, Angela Jemmott and her five brothers paid premiums on a long-term care insurance policy for their 91-year-old mother. But the policy does not cover home health aides whose assistance allows her to stay in her Sacramento, California, bungalow, near the friends and neighbors she loves. Her family pays $4,000 a month for that. “We want her to stay in her house,” Jemmott said. “That’s what’s probably keeping her alive, because she’s in her element, not in a strange place.” (Rau and Aleccia, 11/22)

KFF Health News: A Guide To Long-Term Care Insurance
If you’re wealthy, you’ll be able to afford help in your home or care in an assisted living facility or a nursing home. If you’re poor, you can turn to Medicaid for nursing homes or aides at home. But if you’re middle-class, you’ll have a thorny decision to make: whether to buy long-term care insurance. It’s a more complex decision than for other types of insurance because it’s very difficult to accurately predict your finances or health decades into the future. (Rau, 11/22)

KFF Health News: Listen To The Latest 'KFF Health News Minute'
“Health Minute” brings original health care and health policy reporting from the KFF Health News newsroom to the airwaves each week. (11/21)