By JOHN SAMARAS
A US retail pharmacy pays $1,302 to amass one month of branded Wegovy. That determine comes from the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Companies Nationwide Common Drug Acquisition Price file, efficient August 19, 2026, for the 25 mg oral pill at 30 tablets a month.
The most cost effective money worth I verified on a vendor’s personal printed web page, for a similar month of the identical product, is $299. That’s oral Wegovy on the upkeep dose, at Sam’s Membership Member Well being, which sells on the producer’s printed self-pay worth, checked August 31, 2026.
The 2 numbers are greater than a thousand {dollars} aside.
The place the second quantity comes from
Each Monday I examine what every US GLP-1 telehealth program publishes as its worth, on this system’s personal web page, and document it. Not the marketed beginning price. Not the pay as you go annual plan divided by twelve. The all-in month-to-month price of staying on the drug at a upkeep dose.
This month that document was an index. Throughout a hard and fast panel of 11 applications the median all-in worth was $348 a month in August, the identical determine in all 5 weekly checks. It didn’t transfer in opposition to July.
One program lower its worth in August and none raised one. GoodRx for Weight Loss went from $388 to $338 on August 31, and it sits exterior the panel. Three different obvious cuts within the document had been mine fairly than the applications’. Ivim Well being and Sesame Care had been sitting on pay as you go plan charges, and my Costco by means of Sesame row was carrying $408 for a plan that was $398 all month. Placing every on the speed a reader can begin on at the moment lands within the collection as a step. The revision go surfing the September launch itemizes all three. The most cost effective verified compounded semaglutide route held at $178 a month, at Mochi Well being, which posts one flat all-in worth at each dose. Sam’s Membership Member Well being was the most cost effective verified branded route at $299 for the Wegovy tablet. Each figures had been checked on August 31, 2026.
The tactic suits in a paragraph. For the flooring, take the bottom printed all-in worth in every route on each Monday of the month, then take the median of these weekly lows. For the median, take the center of the fastened panel every Monday, then the median of these 5 weekly figures. The panel is fastened on function, so a change during which applications I observe can not learn as a change in worth. The quantity sits at a dated URL and doesn’t change after publication. A correction turns into a numbered revision with a observe.
NADAC measures acquisition price
The space between $1,302 and $299 just isn’t pharmacy margin. NADAC measures what pharmacies pay their wholesaler. It says nothing about shelling out prices, the clinician go to, delivery, or what a producer fees by means of a channel it owns.
46brooklyn Analysis has printed NADAC dashboards free since 2019, and each spinoff right here rests on their work. What I added is the be a part of: their acquisition knowledge in opposition to verified client money costs, which no one had put facet by facet.
The 2 costs sit in numerous channels. Insurance coverage routes a affected person into the pharmacy channel, the place the $1,302 sits. The $299 is a money worth, paid by a purchaser with no protection.
The packaging hole
The identical NADAC file holds a second discovering. Lilly sells Zepbound each as single-dose pens and as a multi-dose KwikPen. At 15 mg, a pharmacy pays $672 a month for the KwikPen and $1,051 a month for the equal single-dose pens. The one distinction is the container. The unfold is 1.56x, or $379 a month. On the 2.5 mg beginning dose it’s $482 in opposition to $1,052, or 2.18x.
Why no one else has this quantity
Costs on this class transfer weekly and no one information them. A affected person can not inform an introductory price from a upkeep price. A reporter overlaying a worth lower has no baseline to say whether or not it was a lower in any respect, and the one public numbers are those a producer put in a press launch.
The repair is anyone writing the value down each week and publishing the tactic with a model quantity on it.
The whole lot above is free to reuse underneath CC BY 4.0, with a hyperlink and no registration. The CSV and the JSON sit at https://glpchart.com/price-index/. If you need a unique lower, by state, by drug or by program, ask and you should have it inside a day.
From October the discharge lands on the primary Tuesday of the month. The following one is October 6, 2026.
John Samaras is the founding father of GLP Chart, which verifies the money worth of each US GLP-1 telehealth program each Monday. He writes about worth, protection and market construction, and leaves the medical inquiries to clinicians.
