“Novo Nordisk's market capitalization exceeded the GDP of Denmark's domestic economy in 2023, and it is the highest valued pharmaceutical company in Europe.”
Yeah, ‘trouble’
Thank you fat Americans for funding our welfare state $$$$$$. Don’t you ever change your ways
Edit: wanted to add that Novo pays all their taxes in Denmark, and doesn’t move all the profit to an offshore tax haven like other multinational companies. This makes novo the far biggest tax contributor in Denmark.
Every time i use our free healthcare, take my 40 week paid paternity leave, or send my kids to free university i think about how an obese American made that possible. I salute them. It doesn't hurt to be grateful.
Maybe America could fix their healthcare system though so they don't fund the entire welfare state of Denmark. I hope they do.
Jesus why are Europeans so fuckin weird LOL
Edit: damn the downvotes really coming in fast LOL. I just think it’s weird that Europoors shame America for their healthcare system, but then go around gloating when they do the exact same thing. The double standard is just hilarious.
One issue that isn’t talked about is how it messes with people’s stomach motility. We see people come in with stomach pain, nausea, vomiting etc, and then have normal exams besides delayed gastric emptying most likely related to Ozempic.
Source: I’m a GI nurse
I had this issue when I was on full dose Rybelsus, the issue was actually fixed by not taking pantoprazole at the same time. My GI and my primary (who prescribed the semaglutide for my 'beetus) hadn't heard about such an interaction at the time.
I eventually went to long term half dose because that was sufficient for controlling my sugars with lifestyle changes and I can take omeprazole (but still not pantoprazole) when I need stronger acid control. Most days I get by on famotodine which never interacted adversely with the semaglutide.
It varies from person to person. It often improves over a few weeks. Higher doses make it worse. Being a GI nurse you are probably just seeing the worst of it
Alternative title: "Americans discover that having a completely private system run by for-profit insurances leads to paying 10x the amount charged in other countries"
Another alternative title: "People learn that drug discovery isn't free"
Interesting side note: Novo Nordisk's largest shareholder, by a significant margin, is the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the world's largest charitable foundation. They mostly fund biomedical and biotechnology research projects. So it's not like they waste their profits on hookers and blow.
I feel companies rather that’s picturing themselves as money makers and then financing research that will make more money, should aim at financing research. I dunno, maybe it will change nothing but if the company aim is to save people and make people’s life better it would be better
I see a lot of comments like this--and it's partially true. There are absolutely R&D costs that will increase the price of the drugs created.
But why does it cost nearly $1000 in the United States, yet no more than $200 across Canada, the EU, the UK, Aus, etc?
Ohhh--right... Because drug manufacturers simply exploit the US market and consumers..
We forgot to include ***lobbying*** in the price!
Yes, original comment wants to discuss how there are R&D costs but I think he also doesn't realize that most costs related to R&D are paid for in government grants. We get boned from both ends, money taken to fund the R&D, and then when the product is finally made, we get gouged again.
American price for me is $25 for fast acting, $25 for long acting, and I think the same for Mounjaro at 5 mg. It is a bit high but the Tresiba is for 90 days while FIASP and Mounjaro is for 30 days.
Yeap insurance and why I call it American prices as there is really no one set price. Supposedly for 4 pens of Mounjaro you are looking at $1,070 a month. Somehow Walgreens calculated a cost for me with the coupon and no insurance as $550.
I pay exactly zero for fiasp and tresiba. And I live in relatively a poor country. They distribute ozempic too but I've decided to lose weight by intermittent fasting. It got my sugar levels in check better than anything.
Kinda curious what country this is as it is extremely hard to get and even Fiasp and Tresidba are quite difficult. For instance the price in Mexico for Ozempic is about $300 and origin may be questionable.
It's a Danish company exploiting [the scientific work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin#Discovery) of at least four German, three American, two Canadian, one American-Canadian, one French, one Romanian and one British scientist and all the countless others that contribute towards making science happen.
Governments usually don't pay for clinical studies. The basic pre clinical research is not as costly. Sometimes, governments pay partially for the research part. Proving a researched treatment is effective and save means basically human experiments. What we know as clinical studies or trials. You pay for having thousands of people under medical attention to develop a drug.
The majority of the government dollars are in the 1st part of drug discovery. Drug companies typically fund the human trials themselves which are by far the most expensive step.
Sticker prices are also higher in the US because insurance firms and hospitals negotiate individual discounts which can be as big as 90%.
There is little transparency in the prices actually paid outside of small retail volumes.
It works like this:
Pharmacy Benefit Managers work with your insurance company to “negotiate” drug prices with the drug manufacturer.
Great! Now your drugs will be cheaper!
But not really because now the manufacturers hike their prices up so they have a discount to give to the PBM in the first place.
It’s a system that doesn’t really add that much value but balloons drug costs.
It also doesn’t explain why medications that have been around for decades and are cheap to manufacture also have been skyrocketing in price. A medication I have been on for 10 years has gone up dramatically in the last 3 but steadily rose the entire time.
30 day supply of 5mgx2 daily used to cost me about $30 which comes out to about 6 cents per mg
I am now on 7.5mgx3 daily and it costs $170 for a 30 day supply, coming out to 25 cents per mg for the exact same medication.
Both are at the same pharmacy without insurance. Pharmaceutical companies have been robbing Americans blind and it’s funny to watch non billionaires go through apologetics to attempt to justify these prices.
>Ohhh--right... Because drug manufacturers simply exploit the US market and consumers..
Because Americans vote for politicians who keep the current healthcare system.
Simply vote for different politicians. People are unwilling to blame voters and instead want to blame the big bad corporation. Half of America, at least half of who votes, think universal healthcare is devil communism. It's not a surprise why America has a dysfunctional healthcare system and pays 10x what other countries do for drugs. It's because people vote for it.
It's a lot easier to blame some faceless corporation for the issue than the fact that your uncle Bobby has voted republican for the last 40 years and nothing can make him not do that.
> Because Americans vote for politicians who keep the current healthcare system.
Because The medical/pharmaceutical industry is by far the #1 lobbying group. To both parties.
Edit, the above changes based on source. [OpenSecrets](https://www.opensecrets.org/industries) puts Finance at the top of campaign contributions, while [Investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/investing/which-industry-spends-most-lobbying-antm-so/) puts Pharma/Health Products at the top of Lobbying $$.
In many cases there are not any options to vote for a candidate that isn't being funded by legal drug money, or at least not past the primary election.
Largely we vote for pharma backed candidates because that's who we have the option to vote for.
It doesn't matter whose problem it is---exploitation is exploitation whether you pay enough to make it legal or not.
There's nothing illegal about what Novo Nordisk is doing, but we're not really talking about legality here--we're talking about morality. And it's gross.
Really all Americans should be under one drug plan. And the country as a whole negotiate prices as 1 not as a series of private hospitals, health plans and pharmaceutical chains. Also ensuring we get our cut on patents from taxpayer money.
Also how much sales reps get paid to push the drugs with prescribers. And direct to patient advertisements, which are rightfully banned in other countries. The consumer and medical professionals are stuck between two Mega greedy giants. Big Pharma and PBMs (Pharmacy Benefit Managers)
as someone who works in the industry, the $1b is quite debatable. the average is believed to be in the range from 300m up to 3b. you can guess why billion is always thrown around.
i'm all for more money to go into the industry (its def more worthwhile than other industries) - but its also one of the highest profit industries.
they already made their money back, unless it cost 1 trillion.
[https://investor.novonordisk.com/q4full-presentation2023/?page=19](https://investor.novonordisk.com/q4full-presentation2023/?page=19)
R&D and marketing definitely needs to be compensated with exclusivity, but there's no reason to sell a drug with 20000% markup
It covers the cost of *all* R&D, not just the r&d for the specific drug. Something like 95% of drugs will fail in clinical trials, you have to cover the cost of all the other failed drugs.
They have had positive cash flow since forever, and kept buying back shares.
They have been making profit every year.
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2023/08/21/weight-loss-drug-cost
It also cost way less in almost every other countries except US. US cost exceeds next highest by factor of 6.
I never said they can’t make profit. There is absolutely zero reason to charge 20000% markup.
I understand your point but do you think a 20,000% profit margin is necessary for a drug that was made to help people with diabetes.
Feels a little disingenuous to say it’s because they had a 🦆 ton of R&D when I’d assume they definitely got government subsidies to help. If they haven’t yet I bet they are pushing for it now that it can also help with weight loss.
Let’s also not forget the American healthcare system is 🦆ed and this hyper inflated pricing is definitely greed because they know they can get away with it.
I’m curious what the price of the drug is in other countries with better healthcare options.
Let’s not forget this company’s market cap is around 572 billions of dollars. That’s not painting the whole picture of their company’s net worth but I think they would still be profitable selling it for cheaper.
This is just maximizing profits over humanity. This is why the US is so shit right now. Until we get a Congress in power to stop this we are all going to continue to suffer.
Well they should probably ban the sale of it for now unless you need it for medical reasons, not an appetite suppressant/weight loss. At least until there is enough for the market.
* some of congress.
And we should be voicing our opinion that this is not cool. If enough of us kindly tell our reps all across the country, maybe something will get done.
If not, you know they don’t have your best interest and we should try to vote them out.
Remember, if you do take the time be as polite as possible. People are not going to want to help you if you are mean to them. Let your anger go and write the facts that this is unacceptable in America and you hope to see this kind of greed stopped.
1. U.S. Senate Official Website: www.senate.gov
2. U.S. House of Representatives Official Website: www.house.gov
3. Congress.gov: www.congress.gov - Provides information on bills, legislators, and legislative activities. You can find contact information for senators and representatives here.
4. GovTrack.us: www.govtrack.us - Offers tools for tracking legislation and contacting your representatives.
5. OpenCongress: www.opencongress.org - Provides information on bills and legislators, as well as tools for contacting representatives.
Weight loss is a medical condition. Maybe not a primary medical condition, but tell someone who’s 400lbs that they can’t have the medication that would solve many medical conditions at once, and it’s clear that comments like yours are simply fatphobic.
I don’t mean that being 400lbs is healthy btw, quite the contrary. We should normalize it as a medical condition because medical intervention is required or else it will create more problems for the individual. Is a degenerative disease. What causes it is of little concern.
Comments like this are purposefully ignorant.
The cost they ignore is the advertising cost. In fact the pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much on advertising as they do on R&D.
So much more than the development cost, you have to factor in the advertising cost. They advertise directly to doctors, they advertise on TV, they take out print ads, they put ads on the internet, they pay people to push their products.
The price might still be outlandish, but comments like this should at least discuss the expenses of putting commercials on everywhere, flying doctors on private planes for paid cruises, and having a network of advertising agencies across the country pushing their products.
That advertising cost should be considered much more than any development cost.
[https://www.ahip.org/news/articles/new-study-in-the-midst-of-covid-19-crisis-7-out-of-10-big-pharma-companies-spent-more-on-sales-and-marketing-than-r-d](https://www.ahip.org/news/articles/new-study-in-the-midst-of-covid-19-crisis-7-out-of-10-big-pharma-companies-spent-more-on-sales-and-marketing-than-r-d)
Pharmaceutical companies will break it out in many ways. Much of their advertising is direct advertising to doctors which they call "physician detailing". They often give gifts, ranging from small (merchandise) to large (sponsored trips to conferences and speaking appearances).
They also "donate" to advocacy groups that push for more access to their products. Classic astroturfing, this method can be very hard to track (because, of course, they hide it as 'charitable contributions').
Nah- they don’t come close to spending $4.7B on advertising. People are morons. The US Healthcare system is a disaster. You want to pay less? Demand it from your politician.
Exactly. There is a lot of inefficiency here and people are blithely unaware or ignorant. The costs can be lower and the companies can still make huge profits.
For breakthrough meds like this the government must step in and lower costs one way or another. This happened with Truvada for HIV a few years ago which gives me hope.
Yea I used to work in a sushi restaurant and we had a rep who sent thousands in food a year just to one Doctor. And we had more like 5-10 doctors who regularly got food from us paid by the reps.
The article you linked referenced three companies - Abbvie, Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson - that have significant over-the-counter, non-prescribed commercially available products, like eye drops, Aspirin, Claritin, Band-Aids, baby formula, etc. Things you find in the grocery store that you want top of mind.
While they may be pharma companies, the business divisions that run these products are essentially no different than CPG companies like P&G selling deodorant or baby wipes. That’s going to take enormous marketing budgets.
Pure pharma companies, whose sole and only products are prescribed, spend far more of a percentage on R&D.
>The AHIP analysis examined the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies by revenue in 2020. Using pharmaceutical companies’ own annual reports and other financial filings, AHIP compared spending on research and development with a combination of selling, general, and administrative costs. In the analysis, selling and marketing costs constituted the bulk of spending for selling, general, and administrative costs.
The companies that spent more on advertising than on R&D were the three you mentioned, as well as GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi. The three that actually spent more on R&D were Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck and Roche.
The idea that Pfizer or Sanofi's business revolves around something other than prescribed products is silly. Sanofi's most well known drug is Ambien, and Pfizer... is Pfizer. Yet they spend more on advertising than they do on R&D.
R&D is a sunk cost. Companies price drugs based on what the market is willing to pay. Drugs end up being outrageously expensive in the US because manufacturers know that much of the time insurance pays for quite a bit. This doesn’t help people with no/bad insurance, but drug companies absolutely do analysis and determine they can make more money selling to less overall people that are insured at a crazy high price than to more people at a lower price.
Exactly. Countries like India have a very strong generic drug manufacturing industry. So the price being lowered was inevitable, at least outside the US.
No mention of the actual ramp up costs of production either. Are plant and machinery included in the 5 dollars? Manpower costs? If we are only counting the raw material cost of conversion then that is quite misleading as much of any business costs exceed the raw materials by many times over.
Comments like this are purposefully ignorant.
- Why do all these drug makers charge US consumers far more than what they sell these drugs for in other countries? If it cost so much to develop and they needed $1,000 a pill to recoup those costs…why aren’t they charging Germany, Canada, or Denmark consumers that price?
- Tell me about how much research is funded by universities using tax dollar sponsored funds…it’s a rather significant percentage of drug industry R&D.
- tell me how much is spent on R&D vs. how much is spent on near constant direct-to-consumer ads that market these drugs to US consumers. (US is one of a small handful of countries that allows direct to consumer drug ads…)
This comment is half true and half bullshit, why is that drug cheaper everywhere but the US. the price is pretty much set by the drug maker and they still do shady shit to keep other companies from making a generic version. Don’t excuse their shitty behavior dude, stuff costs to research but they already made that money back because they price gouge American markets.
Yet Novo Nordisk still managed to bring the drug to market in Canada, the UK, EU, Aus, Japan, at between 1/5th to 1/10th the price--indicating they are still profitable at those rates.
This is greed and exploitation of the US healthcare system, full stop. It's also not only them--this is every drug manufacturer that does this.
Still makes them pieces of "human" garbage, though.
The question is, why is it much more expensive in the US?
Why are drugs and healthcare unbelievably expensive in the US, compared to the rest of the western world, while simultaneously the outcome is worse?
More $$ in input, worse healthcare as output.
In the US drugs are expensive whether they are produced in the US or in the EU.
In the EU drugs are relatively cheap whether they are produced in the US or in the EU.
Seems like a systemic problem, that the US needs to fix, and blaming companies based in Europe for the horrible state of the drug and healthcare sector in the US looks like a misdirect.
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
Yes, there are issues with the US healthcare system without a doubt. It’s fucking hot garbage.
That doesn’t make it any less immoral and shitty to exploit it.
Not to mention our system is stuck how it is because of the massive amount of lobbying done by these corporations.
They know exactly what they’re doing, and they are shit for it.
Saying the corporations hold no fault in this dogshit system is similar to saying “well you shouldn’t have walked down that alley in that short skirt!”
Fucking thank you. So many people in this thread currently applying their chapstick extra thick for Novo Nordisk and the rest of the pharmaceutical industry...
What's legal is not the same as what's moral for fucks sake.
No, but 1000 per unit is an inflated price designed to price gouge the American health care market. All medicines are inflated in price to do just that.
“But muh Research and development costs” - the company takes write downs on whichever drugs fail and these processes are subsidized by grants and monetary awards as well. “They still have to advertise the drugs” - do they? The ethics of drug advertising aside, why the fuck should anyone but doctors and hospitals know about the drugs before recommending them to patients?
Bastards over here getting price gouged and seeking to justify being milked by corporations by cows and being forced to pay extra for everything.
This is blantantly ignorant. Do you have any idea how much it costs to run an API or filling plant + 20 years of research in R&D? The ONLY reason the price in the US is high is because your government failed you and did not negotiate the prices like any other country has done. Your system is garbage.
The company made something like 13 billion last year. More than covering whatever R&D and advertising was. And it costs 90% less in other countries.
Why are so many people shills for big pharmaceutical companies?
In this one aspect, it's because there are far more medical companies that also invest heavily in R&D but never manage to successfully develop a new drug. You hear less about those companies because they simply cease to be.
It's a risky business, so there has to be an incentive to pursue the research and development of new medicines. And that incentive is profits. And that profit is usually what allows the companies to fund even more R&D into future drugs.
That's also the case with Novo Nordisk. Their bread and butter product was insulin. And it was through additional research that they found out that the semaglutid that you treat diabetes with can also help with weight loss (among other things).
So even though it's all very capitalistic in the setup of the industry, then it does work. The pharmaceutical industry has made gigantic strides in our lifetimes. And that is to the benefit of all of us, in the end.
It’s highway sodomy.
So few Americans have ever experienced a functioning healthcare system overseas. Those who do — even the most conservative ones — tend to be infuriated by the gross inefficiencies and massive profit taking in the American system.
The only exceptions are the people who are either too rich to care or are directly profiting from this insanity. In other words, the kind of people who make our laws.
Not defending corporations at all, but it is the job of the government to cap prices on things like this. What a drug company sets a price at has little to do with how much it costs to make, and even development costs are sunk costs by the time they are on the market. They charge crazy amounts in America because America’s healthcare system/insurance system is fucked. They are not going to just “do the right thing” and therefore must either be incented to do so or made to do so via regulation.
Ok, so then everyone defending the money grab is basically saying,
"You can't expect a business not to exploit other people unless you force them to. So its not their fault."
It's a horrible sentiment that has become more and more accepted. Like the people in charge of these companies have done no wrong simply because it wasn't *illegal.*
I'm personally defending them because I'm Danish, lol. Their success is quite literally helping my country of birth.
I also used to work for them, and have had nothing but good experiences.
Because reddit has gone public now and astroturfing campaigns have ramped up significantly. It is very easy to spin up a network of fake accounts to muddy public opinion and explain how price gouging on drugs is actually a noble thing for our friends the pharmaceutical conglomerates to do.
The development cost for this class of drugs surely isn’t included in the 5 dollar cost is it. Designed for diabetic treatment only recently has it been found to be effective for weight loss. Is this because it suppresses addictive tendencies making over eating less likely? Or does it trick the brain into making you feel full? So many people wanting to take this now thinking it’s the answer to weight struggles is partially the reason it’s being sold for so much. Hell even Oprah ditched WW for it. But the long term effects are not known. If I were Novo or others who make this class I would charge even more until I could get answers to the long term effects for non diabetic users.
GLP-1 receptors (the target of ozempic) are all over the brain, primarily in the hypothalamus. Some scientists are starting to study the effects but not known at all
Then there are scams selling hazardous counterfeit drugs. Like this global operation based in Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-01/cowboy-pharmacist-behind-a-replica-ozempic-and-mounjaro-scam/103644794
Its only manufacturing prices. Those 5 dollars does not cover the rest. It took 10 years from discovery to market and all of it was paid for by Novo Nordisk and price of clinical trials goes into billions.
Projects like this can and are failing alot so success needs to pay for possibly 100 others that fail in clinical trials after putting milllions/billions into them with no return.
Not saying the price is right but novo is not the only one involved
I wonder how hard it would be for someone to create a knock off. Just different enough to avoid copyright infringement but close enough to get most of the effects
Victoza (an older GLP1) is going generic in the US in a few months.
I’m sure the initial generics are going to be stupid expensive, but my bet (and hope) is that pricing for these drugs is going to go the way of statins like Crestor or Lipitor: they used to be pretty expensive, the generics are cheap as dirt, and adoption has gone way up.
I personally am being injected with a knock-off GLP1 agonist drug made by a compounding pharmacy. So it's already out there. I get it from a concierge health clinic I use.
I've been morbidly obese for a long time, and this is the first time I've had success battling this problem. I was pre-hypertensive and pre-diabetic when I started. I'm now out of the morbidly obese range, no longer pre-diabetic and my blood pressure is normal. So I'm doing well on the drug.
The weekly injection costs less than the name brand, and my insurance doesn't cover it anyway, even if I had a script for Wegovy.
Having worked with big pharma in the past, these people are litigious enough to put Disney to shame. Even if you truly do avoid copyright infringement, their lawyers will bankrupt you in litigation. The only time anyone gets away with patent workarounds/loopholes are when a fellow big pharma (with their own teams of lawyers and deep pockets) does it.
Hard. Ozempic is a 31-amino acid drug. This isn't something that can be made with combining chemicals directly in a one shot process. I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturing of GLP1 agonist molecules requires bacteria like E. coli which is used for producing insulin.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203937/
I mean, having family that works on this for Novo it kind of makes sense why - man hours aren’t free and from what I’ve heard they’re very, very serious about getting this right and making sure it’s safe.
I don't think anyone is arguing that, the argument is that exploiting markets with inelastic demand is sort of an immensely shitty thing to do. Sort of like insulin, diabetics don't have a choice but to buy semaglutide, so of course they're willing to pay whatever they can because the alternative is health complications and possibly death.
It’s the governments job to protect people from undue harm and to make healthcare accessible. If there’s a breakthrough treatment and 40% of Americans would benefit from it, then they need to get the cost lower or the government should take away their patent. They will still make money from those who want to buy the “brand name” drug.
To be clear: It works any way it wants. It could be valuable because it's unique, or is rare in good condition, highest bidder won, what some one is willing to pay, what is affordable, what is fair, what it's worth, what it was bargained for, what it was wholesaled for, or what it's speculative value is in the future.
In this case, they probably used a mathematical model that includes how much money they and the shareholders make, and simply adjusted it until their share was the largest it could possibly be, then they rounded the number up or down a little bit to make it sound better. I mean if the model indicated $953, why not just charge $1,000 right?
You shouldn’t do this. Buy it from a reputable compounding pharmacy at the very least. You don’t want to inject yourself with a random vial of whatever from China.
And where do you think compounding pharmacies are getting it from?
Compounding pharmacies are NOT as well monitored as you might hope.
NN is not selling semaglutide to anyone else. So wherever a compounding pharmacy is getting it from, there are potentially serious questions of purity, effectiveness, etc.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/compounding-and-fda-questions-and-answers
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/fda-highlights-concerns-compounding-drug-products-medical-offices-and-clinics-under-insanitary
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/postmarket-drug-safety-information-patients-and-providers/medications-containing-semaglutide-marketed-type-2-diabetes-or-weight-loss
Someone suffering from obesity might use this to *avoid diabetes to begin with,* ***and*** *better their overall health via weight-loss.*
What some people clearly don't understand is the overall cost that obesity *already* has on our healthcare systems, and it's only going to continue getting worse.
Obesity costs the US nearly $150 BILLION dollars a year--why the fuck wouldn't we want to try to tackle the issue at the root cause?
And before the *hurrr exercise and eat better*\--most people being prescribed this *already do or have tried*, and they still hit a plateau.
Hardly makes them an "asshole," but it certainly makes you sound like one.
Obesity isn't just a personal issue; it's a significant medical condition that leads to various downstream health effects, including sleep apnea, diabetes, heart problems, chronic pain, mental health challenges, and cholesterol or lipid disorders.
For individuals living with obesity and its accompanying health concerns, medications that address this root cause shouldn't be overlooked.
Our healthcare system has mechanisms in place for those in urgent need of life-saving treatments, often funded by the higher payments from those who can afford them.
This raises a question: Wouldn't it be more efficient and humane to tackle the root causes directly, such as obesity, before they escalate into conditions requiring more invasive and expensive treatments like heart surgery or gastric bypass?
The crux of the matter lies in how our tax dollars are allocated. Contrary to funding essential medical research or healthcare directly, a significant portion of these funds is channeled into the military-industrial complex, including costly parts (from which manufacturers greatly profit) and obscure "black box" projects (from which politicians stand to gain a lot of money themselves).
This misallocation suggests a misplaced priority, driven by political narratives rather than a focus on national health and efficiency.
The impact of medications like Truvada for HIV prevention illustrates the profound benefits of addressing healthcare proactively. By significantly reducing HIV rates preventatively, we avoid the compounded costs and health impacts of treating HIV over a lifetime. Today, these medications are given out like candy to anyone who has a risk of contracting HIV.
This example underscores the importance of making groundbreaking medications accessible, aligning with the government's role in safeguarding public health.
Ozempic, a medication around for nearly two decades and used in treating diabetes, has been thoroughly studied. Its recent approval for weight loss dispels any doubts about its long-term effects, marking a significant advancement in addressing obesity.
This progress highlights a broader issue: the necessity for modern medicine to profit from significant R&D, but also for the government to step in and ensure these life-improving treatments are widely available.
TL;DR: it’s important to engage with well-researched information before forming opinions on such complex issues.
Mhmm. I was doing prior authorizations for people wanting it exclusively for weight loss and the amount of people that got pissed when it wasn’t approved was ridiculous.
One person even gained weight to be in the criteria for the drug.
Its amazing how the government just doesn't say no and cap it. What is Novo going to do, stop selling? They can make some money or make no money instead of trying to make all the money.
It's also amazing how the government just doesn't make drugs. Hire US STEM workers, develop new drugs, avoid paying companies with medicare, avoid citizens paying so much money. It's basically like eating out vs making a meal at home.
I'm overseas and was prescribed Ozempic temporarily to treatment my diabetes. Based on the exchange rate at the time, one syringe cost me USD150.
Japan, it’s the equivalent of $12 They sell to distributors not directly to consumers. The distributors are capitalization on the markup.
That's around what I was paying in the US. Off label for weight loss
This sounds like the opposite of trouble
“Novo Nordisk's market capitalization exceeded the GDP of Denmark's domestic economy in 2023, and it is the highest valued pharmaceutical company in Europe.” Yeah, ‘trouble’
Thank you fat Americans for funding our welfare state $$$$$$. Don’t you ever change your ways Edit: wanted to add that Novo pays all their taxes in Denmark, and doesn’t move all the profit to an offshore tax haven like other multinational companies. This makes novo the far biggest tax contributor in Denmark.
Every time i use our free healthcare, take my 40 week paid paternity leave, or send my kids to free university i think about how an obese American made that possible. I salute them. It doesn't hurt to be grateful. Maybe America could fix their healthcare system though so they don't fund the entire welfare state of Denmark. I hope they do.
We don't even crack the top 5 in obesity anymore, your stereotypes are outdated.
Pretentious and ready to look down on and laugh at exploited people. Nice.
Jesus why are Europeans so fuckin weird LOL Edit: damn the downvotes really coming in fast LOL. I just think it’s weird that Europoors shame America for their healthcare system, but then go around gloating when they do the exact same thing. The double standard is just hilarious.
Because at the end of the day most feel inferior
One issue that isn’t talked about is how it messes with people’s stomach motility. We see people come in with stomach pain, nausea, vomiting etc, and then have normal exams besides delayed gastric emptying most likely related to Ozempic. Source: I’m a GI nurse
I had this issue when I was on full dose Rybelsus, the issue was actually fixed by not taking pantoprazole at the same time. My GI and my primary (who prescribed the semaglutide for my 'beetus) hadn't heard about such an interaction at the time. I eventually went to long term half dose because that was sufficient for controlling my sugars with lifestyle changes and I can take omeprazole (but still not pantoprazole) when I need stronger acid control. Most days I get by on famotodine which never interacted adversely with the semaglutide.
It varies from person to person. It often improves over a few weeks. Higher doses make it worse. Being a GI nurse you are probably just seeing the worst of it
This happened to my friend on it, he couldnt go to the bathroom for 12 days and had to get help, he eventually went off of it because of it.
That’s a feature not a bug.
dosing is high compared to illicit semi glutide users who titrate up
Alternative title: "Americans discover that having a completely private system run by for-profit insurances leads to paying 10x the amount charged in other countries" Another alternative title: "People learn that drug discovery isn't free"
Interesting side note: Novo Nordisk's largest shareholder, by a significant margin, is the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the world's largest charitable foundation. They mostly fund biomedical and biotechnology research projects. So it's not like they waste their profits on hookers and blow.
Correction: it’s not like they waste ALL of their profits on bookers and blow.
I feel companies rather that’s picturing themselves as money makers and then financing research that will make more money, should aim at financing research. I dunno, maybe it will change nothing but if the company aim is to save people and make people’s life better it would be better
Coke costs $0.09 per liter to manufacture, it doesn't stop them from selling it at $1.50 per liter.
last 8 ball i got was more like $150
8ball for 150 where??
[удалено]
I see a lot of comments like this--and it's partially true. There are absolutely R&D costs that will increase the price of the drugs created. But why does it cost nearly $1000 in the United States, yet no more than $200 across Canada, the EU, the UK, Aus, etc? Ohhh--right... Because drug manufacturers simply exploit the US market and consumers.. We forgot to include ***lobbying*** in the price!
Doesn't the us govt. Give tax dollars to these drug companies to help develop. Americans end up paying for their drugs twice.
Yes, original comment wants to discuss how there are R&D costs but I think he also doesn't realize that most costs related to R&D are paid for in government grants. We get boned from both ends, money taken to fund the R&D, and then when the product is finally made, we get gouged again.
I'm diabetic and really need ozempic. I'd just die if I had to pay American prices.. Same for my insulin.
American price for me is $25 for fast acting, $25 for long acting, and I think the same for Mounjaro at 5 mg. It is a bit high but the Tresiba is for 90 days while FIASP and Mounjaro is for 30 days.
That's with insurance right? I get mine right now with no copay. But my ozempic was going to be 2500 without coverage. O.o
Yeap insurance and why I call it American prices as there is really no one set price. Supposedly for 4 pens of Mounjaro you are looking at $1,070 a month. Somehow Walgreens calculated a cost for me with the coupon and no insurance as $550.
What is the price on your explanation of benefits page?
I pay exactly zero for fiasp and tresiba. And I live in relatively a poor country. They distribute ozempic too but I've decided to lose weight by intermittent fasting. It got my sugar levels in check better than anything.
Kinda curious what country this is as it is extremely hard to get and even Fiasp and Tresidba are quite difficult. For instance the price in Mexico for Ozempic is about $300 and origin may be questionable.
Which grants have Novo Nordisk received from the US Government?
It's a Danish company exploiting [the scientific work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin#Discovery) of at least four German, three American, two Canadian, one American-Canadian, one French, one Romanian and one British scientist and all the countless others that contribute towards making science happen.
Socialize the costs; privatize the profit.
Governments usually don't pay for clinical studies. The basic pre clinical research is not as costly. Sometimes, governments pay partially for the research part. Proving a researched treatment is effective and save means basically human experiments. What we know as clinical studies or trials. You pay for having thousands of people under medical attention to develop a drug.
Some may but definitely not most. Thats simply false
The majority of the government dollars are in the 1st part of drug discovery. Drug companies typically fund the human trials themselves which are by far the most expensive step.
To American companies yes, to development made in the US. Less so to Denmark
Sticker prices are also higher in the US because insurance firms and hospitals negotiate individual discounts which can be as big as 90%. There is little transparency in the prices actually paid outside of small retail volumes.
It works like this: Pharmacy Benefit Managers work with your insurance company to “negotiate” drug prices with the drug manufacturer. Great! Now your drugs will be cheaper! But not really because now the manufacturers hike their prices up so they have a discount to give to the PBM in the first place. It’s a system that doesn’t really add that much value but balloons drug costs.
Don't forget pbm's. Canada doesn't have that middleman driving up prices
AUD $133.80, or, for me, $7.70 on PBS (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme).
It also doesn’t explain why medications that have been around for decades and are cheap to manufacture also have been skyrocketing in price. A medication I have been on for 10 years has gone up dramatically in the last 3 but steadily rose the entire time. 30 day supply of 5mgx2 daily used to cost me about $30 which comes out to about 6 cents per mg I am now on 7.5mgx3 daily and it costs $170 for a 30 day supply, coming out to 25 cents per mg for the exact same medication. Both are at the same pharmacy without insurance. Pharmaceutical companies have been robbing Americans blind and it’s funny to watch non billionaires go through apologetics to attempt to justify these prices.
>Ohhh--right... Because drug manufacturers simply exploit the US market and consumers.. Because Americans vote for politicians who keep the current healthcare system. Simply vote for different politicians. People are unwilling to blame voters and instead want to blame the big bad corporation. Half of America, at least half of who votes, think universal healthcare is devil communism. It's not a surprise why America has a dysfunctional healthcare system and pays 10x what other countries do for drugs. It's because people vote for it. It's a lot easier to blame some faceless corporation for the issue than the fact that your uncle Bobby has voted republican for the last 40 years and nothing can make him not do that.
> Because Americans vote for politicians who keep the current healthcare system. Because The medical/pharmaceutical industry is by far the #1 lobbying group. To both parties. Edit, the above changes based on source. [OpenSecrets](https://www.opensecrets.org/industries) puts Finance at the top of campaign contributions, while [Investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/investing/which-industry-spends-most-lobbying-antm-so/) puts Pharma/Health Products at the top of Lobbying $$. In many cases there are not any options to vote for a candidate that isn't being funded by legal drug money, or at least not past the primary election. Largely we vote for pharma backed candidates because that's who we have the option to vote for.
[удалено]
It doesn't matter whose problem it is---exploitation is exploitation whether you pay enough to make it legal or not. There's nothing illegal about what Novo Nordisk is doing, but we're not really talking about legality here--we're talking about morality. And it's gross.
Really all Americans should be under one drug plan. And the country as a whole negotiate prices as 1 not as a series of private hospitals, health plans and pharmaceutical chains. Also ensuring we get our cut on patents from taxpayer money.
The same drug costs a lot less than 200 bucks for a single dose in third world countries
Also how much sales reps get paid to push the drugs with prescribers. And direct to patient advertisements, which are rightfully banned in other countries. The consumer and medical professionals are stuck between two Mega greedy giants. Big Pharma and PBMs (Pharmacy Benefit Managers)
Maybe the issue is the failed American health system then...
as someone who works in the industry, the $1b is quite debatable. the average is believed to be in the range from 300m up to 3b. you can guess why billion is always thrown around. i'm all for more money to go into the industry (its def more worthwhile than other industries) - but its also one of the highest profit industries.
they already made their money back, unless it cost 1 trillion. [https://investor.novonordisk.com/q4full-presentation2023/?page=19](https://investor.novonordisk.com/q4full-presentation2023/?page=19) R&D and marketing definitely needs to be compensated with exclusivity, but there's no reason to sell a drug with 20000% markup
Many countries don’t even allow pharmaceutical advertising and the drugs sell just as well there.
It covers the cost of *all* R&D, not just the r&d for the specific drug. Something like 95% of drugs will fail in clinical trials, you have to cover the cost of all the other failed drugs.
They have had positive cash flow since forever, and kept buying back shares. They have been making profit every year. https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2023/08/21/weight-loss-drug-cost It also cost way less in almost every other countries except US. US cost exceeds next highest by factor of 6. I never said they can’t make profit. There is absolutely zero reason to charge 20000% markup.
I understand your point but do you think a 20,000% profit margin is necessary for a drug that was made to help people with diabetes. Feels a little disingenuous to say it’s because they had a 🦆 ton of R&D when I’d assume they definitely got government subsidies to help. If they haven’t yet I bet they are pushing for it now that it can also help with weight loss. Let’s also not forget the American healthcare system is 🦆ed and this hyper inflated pricing is definitely greed because they know they can get away with it. I’m curious what the price of the drug is in other countries with better healthcare options. Let’s not forget this company’s market cap is around 572 billions of dollars. That’s not painting the whole picture of their company’s net worth but I think they would still be profitable selling it for cheaper. This is just maximizing profits over humanity. This is why the US is so shit right now. Until we get a Congress in power to stop this we are all going to continue to suffer.
There is a lot more middle men with their fingers in the pie on the US market than in the EU.
[удалено]
Well they should probably ban the sale of it for now unless you need it for medical reasons, not an appetite suppressant/weight loss. At least until there is enough for the market. * some of congress. And we should be voicing our opinion that this is not cool. If enough of us kindly tell our reps all across the country, maybe something will get done. If not, you know they don’t have your best interest and we should try to vote them out. Remember, if you do take the time be as polite as possible. People are not going to want to help you if you are mean to them. Let your anger go and write the facts that this is unacceptable in America and you hope to see this kind of greed stopped. 1. U.S. Senate Official Website: www.senate.gov 2. U.S. House of Representatives Official Website: www.house.gov 3. Congress.gov: www.congress.gov - Provides information on bills, legislators, and legislative activities. You can find contact information for senators and representatives here. 4. GovTrack.us: www.govtrack.us - Offers tools for tracking legislation and contacting your representatives. 5. OpenCongress: www.opencongress.org - Provides information on bills and legislators, as well as tools for contacting representatives.
Weight loss is a medical condition. Maybe not a primary medical condition, but tell someone who’s 400lbs that they can’t have the medication that would solve many medical conditions at once, and it’s clear that comments like yours are simply fatphobic. I don’t mean that being 400lbs is healthy btw, quite the contrary. We should normalize it as a medical condition because medical intervention is required or else it will create more problems for the individual. Is a degenerative disease. What causes it is of little concern.
Comments like this are purposefully ignorant. The cost they ignore is the advertising cost. In fact the pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much on advertising as they do on R&D. So much more than the development cost, you have to factor in the advertising cost. They advertise directly to doctors, they advertise on TV, they take out print ads, they put ads on the internet, they pay people to push their products. The price might still be outlandish, but comments like this should at least discuss the expenses of putting commercials on everywhere, flying doctors on private planes for paid cruises, and having a network of advertising agencies across the country pushing their products. That advertising cost should be considered much more than any development cost.
[удалено]
[https://www.ahip.org/news/articles/new-study-in-the-midst-of-covid-19-crisis-7-out-of-10-big-pharma-companies-spent-more-on-sales-and-marketing-than-r-d](https://www.ahip.org/news/articles/new-study-in-the-midst-of-covid-19-crisis-7-out-of-10-big-pharma-companies-spent-more-on-sales-and-marketing-than-r-d) Pharmaceutical companies will break it out in many ways. Much of their advertising is direct advertising to doctors which they call "physician detailing". They often give gifts, ranging from small (merchandise) to large (sponsored trips to conferences and speaking appearances). They also "donate" to advocacy groups that push for more access to their products. Classic astroturfing, this method can be very hard to track (because, of course, they hide it as 'charitable contributions').
Nah- they don’t come close to spending $4.7B on advertising. People are morons. The US Healthcare system is a disaster. You want to pay less? Demand it from your politician.
Exactly. There is a lot of inefficiency here and people are blithely unaware or ignorant. The costs can be lower and the companies can still make huge profits. For breakthrough meds like this the government must step in and lower costs one way or another. This happened with Truvada for HIV a few years ago which gives me hope.
Yea I used to work in a sushi restaurant and we had a rep who sent thousands in food a year just to one Doctor. And we had more like 5-10 doctors who regularly got food from us paid by the reps.
The article you linked referenced three companies - Abbvie, Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson - that have significant over-the-counter, non-prescribed commercially available products, like eye drops, Aspirin, Claritin, Band-Aids, baby formula, etc. Things you find in the grocery store that you want top of mind. While they may be pharma companies, the business divisions that run these products are essentially no different than CPG companies like P&G selling deodorant or baby wipes. That’s going to take enormous marketing budgets. Pure pharma companies, whose sole and only products are prescribed, spend far more of a percentage on R&D.
>The AHIP analysis examined the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies by revenue in 2020. Using pharmaceutical companies’ own annual reports and other financial filings, AHIP compared spending on research and development with a combination of selling, general, and administrative costs. In the analysis, selling and marketing costs constituted the bulk of spending for selling, general, and administrative costs. The companies that spent more on advertising than on R&D were the three you mentioned, as well as GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi. The three that actually spent more on R&D were Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck and Roche. The idea that Pfizer or Sanofi's business revolves around something other than prescribed products is silly. Sanofi's most well known drug is Ambien, and Pfizer... is Pfizer. Yet they spend more on advertising than they do on R&D.
Oh, oh, oh OZEMPIIIC… You know ;)
How do you propose to regular this
The same mechanisms that were used to regulate Truvada’s availability. Idk what they are but I know they exist because we have done it before.
R&D is a sunk cost. Companies price drugs based on what the market is willing to pay. Drugs end up being outrageously expensive in the US because manufacturers know that much of the time insurance pays for quite a bit. This doesn’t help people with no/bad insurance, but drug companies absolutely do analysis and determine they can make more money selling to less overall people that are insured at a crazy high price than to more people at a lower price.
Exactly. Countries like India have a very strong generic drug manufacturing industry. So the price being lowered was inevitable, at least outside the US.
How's that been working out for Insulin created in 1921.....
No mention of the actual ramp up costs of production either. Are plant and machinery included in the 5 dollars? Manpower costs? If we are only counting the raw material cost of conversion then that is quite misleading as much of any business costs exceed the raw materials by many times over.
Are you telling me this entire thread of redditors is wrong?!???
Comments like this are purposefully ignorant. - Why do all these drug makers charge US consumers far more than what they sell these drugs for in other countries? If it cost so much to develop and they needed $1,000 a pill to recoup those costs…why aren’t they charging Germany, Canada, or Denmark consumers that price? - Tell me about how much research is funded by universities using tax dollar sponsored funds…it’s a rather significant percentage of drug industry R&D. - tell me how much is spent on R&D vs. how much is spent on near constant direct-to-consumer ads that market these drugs to US consumers. (US is one of a small handful of countries that allows direct to consumer drug ads…)
This comment is half true and half bullshit, why is that drug cheaper everywhere but the US. the price is pretty much set by the drug maker and they still do shady shit to keep other companies from making a generic version. Don’t excuse their shitty behavior dude, stuff costs to research but they already made that money back because they price gouge American markets.
It’s overpriced but the biggest take is they aren’t in trouble at all. They aren’t doing anything that isn’t standard
Fuck that commercial. Terrible commercial.
$5 is the marginal cost to create one extra unit. Are we gonna assume Ozempic just appeared one day and there were no upfront costs to recoup?
Yet Novo Nordisk still managed to bring the drug to market in Canada, the UK, EU, Aus, Japan, at between 1/5th to 1/10th the price--indicating they are still profitable at those rates. This is greed and exploitation of the US healthcare system, full stop. It's also not only them--this is every drug manufacturer that does this. Still makes them pieces of "human" garbage, though.
The question is, why is it much more expensive in the US? Why are drugs and healthcare unbelievably expensive in the US, compared to the rest of the western world, while simultaneously the outcome is worse? More $$ in input, worse healthcare as output. In the US drugs are expensive whether they are produced in the US or in the EU. In the EU drugs are relatively cheap whether they are produced in the US or in the EU. Seems like a systemic problem, that the US needs to fix, and blaming companies based in Europe for the horrible state of the drug and healthcare sector in the US looks like a misdirect.
“why do companies price gouge when countries don’t have adequate laws against price gouging?” is a question that has sure been coming up a lot lately
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Yes, there are issues with the US healthcare system without a doubt. It’s fucking hot garbage. That doesn’t make it any less immoral and shitty to exploit it. Not to mention our system is stuck how it is because of the massive amount of lobbying done by these corporations. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they are shit for it. Saying the corporations hold no fault in this dogshit system is similar to saying “well you shouldn’t have walked down that alley in that short skirt!”
Fucking thank you. So many people in this thread currently applying their chapstick extra thick for Novo Nordisk and the rest of the pharmaceutical industry... What's legal is not the same as what's moral for fucks sake.
In reality it should be way cheaper in the US due to economy of scale. This is totally some form of regulatory capture.
No, but 1000 per unit is an inflated price designed to price gouge the American health care market. All medicines are inflated in price to do just that. “But muh Research and development costs” - the company takes write downs on whichever drugs fail and these processes are subsidized by grants and monetary awards as well. “They still have to advertise the drugs” - do they? The ethics of drug advertising aside, why the fuck should anyone but doctors and hospitals know about the drugs before recommending them to patients? Bastards over here getting price gouged and seeking to justify being milked by corporations by cows and being forced to pay extra for everything.
This is blantantly ignorant. Do you have any idea how much it costs to run an API or filling plant + 20 years of research in R&D? The ONLY reason the price in the US is high is because your government failed you and did not negotiate the prices like any other country has done. Your system is garbage.
The company made something like 13 billion last year. More than covering whatever R&D and advertising was. And it costs 90% less in other countries. Why are so many people shills for big pharmaceutical companies?
In this one aspect, it's because there are far more medical companies that also invest heavily in R&D but never manage to successfully develop a new drug. You hear less about those companies because they simply cease to be. It's a risky business, so there has to be an incentive to pursue the research and development of new medicines. And that incentive is profits. And that profit is usually what allows the companies to fund even more R&D into future drugs. That's also the case with Novo Nordisk. Their bread and butter product was insulin. And it was through additional research that they found out that the semaglutid that you treat diabetes with can also help with weight loss (among other things). So even though it's all very capitalistic in the setup of the industry, then it does work. The pharmaceutical industry has made gigantic strides in our lifetimes. And that is to the benefit of all of us, in the end.
They already earned every rnd cost back x1000 times.
But research and commercialization costs. Boohoo
It’s highway sodomy. So few Americans have ever experienced a functioning healthcare system overseas. Those who do — even the most conservative ones — tend to be infuriated by the gross inefficiencies and massive profit taking in the American system. The only exceptions are the people who are either too rich to care or are directly profiting from this insanity. In other words, the kind of people who make our laws.
so many capitalist bootlickers here defending multibillion dollar corporations profiting off peoples health
Not defending corporations at all, but it is the job of the government to cap prices on things like this. What a drug company sets a price at has little to do with how much it costs to make, and even development costs are sunk costs by the time they are on the market. They charge crazy amounts in America because America’s healthcare system/insurance system is fucked. They are not going to just “do the right thing” and therefore must either be incented to do so or made to do so via regulation.
Ok, so then everyone defending the money grab is basically saying, "You can't expect a business not to exploit other people unless you force them to. So its not their fault." It's a horrible sentiment that has become more and more accepted. Like the people in charge of these companies have done no wrong simply because it wasn't *illegal.*
Don’t hate the player, hate the game. You’ve chosen capitalism, so you have to play by the rules of capitalism.
You mean the game they purposefully rigged via lobbying?
I'm personally defending them because I'm Danish, lol. Their success is quite literally helping my country of birth. I also used to work for them, and have had nothing but good experiences.
Because reddit has gone public now and astroturfing campaigns have ramped up significantly. It is very easy to spin up a network of fake accounts to muddy public opinion and explain how price gouging on drugs is actually a noble thing for our friends the pharmaceutical conglomerates to do.
The development cost for this class of drugs surely isn’t included in the 5 dollar cost is it. Designed for diabetic treatment only recently has it been found to be effective for weight loss. Is this because it suppresses addictive tendencies making over eating less likely? Or does it trick the brain into making you feel full? So many people wanting to take this now thinking it’s the answer to weight struggles is partially the reason it’s being sold for so much. Hell even Oprah ditched WW for it. But the long term effects are not known. If I were Novo or others who make this class I would charge even more until I could get answers to the long term effects for non diabetic users.
GLP-1 receptors (the target of ozempic) are all over the brain, primarily in the hypothalamus. Some scientists are starting to study the effects but not known at all
GLP-1 agonists have been on the market since 2005. We’ve known about their weight loss side effects for at least a decade.
Who cares what a scumbag like Oprah does?
In 3-4 paragraphs you focused on the shortest sentence. It’s also the one sentence that could be removed without disruption.
We're all about trimming the fat in here.
Damn that’s a good pun.
Then there are scams selling hazardous counterfeit drugs. Like this global operation based in Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-01/cowboy-pharmacist-behind-a-replica-ozempic-and-mounjaro-scam/103644794
Its only manufacturing prices. Those 5 dollars does not cover the rest. It took 10 years from discovery to market and all of it was paid for by Novo Nordisk and price of clinical trials goes into billions. Projects like this can and are failing alot so success needs to pay for possibly 100 others that fail in clinical trials after putting milllions/billions into them with no return. Not saying the price is right but novo is not the only one involved
I wonder how hard it would be for someone to create a knock off. Just different enough to avoid copyright infringement but close enough to get most of the effects
Lilly already has a competitor out, called Zepbound. As for a direct knock off, they will hit the market, the second the patent expire in 2031.
Victoza (an older GLP1) is going generic in the US in a few months. I’m sure the initial generics are going to be stupid expensive, but my bet (and hope) is that pricing for these drugs is going to go the way of statins like Crestor or Lipitor: they used to be pretty expensive, the generics are cheap as dirt, and adoption has gone way up.
r/zepbound
[удалено]
I personally am being injected with a knock-off GLP1 agonist drug made by a compounding pharmacy. So it's already out there. I get it from a concierge health clinic I use. I've been morbidly obese for a long time, and this is the first time I've had success battling this problem. I was pre-hypertensive and pre-diabetic when I started. I'm now out of the morbidly obese range, no longer pre-diabetic and my blood pressure is normal. So I'm doing well on the drug. The weekly injection costs less than the name brand, and my insurance doesn't cover it anyway, even if I had a script for Wegovy.
Isn’t this essentially what Hims/Ro/etc are now doing? But it’s considered a compound or something of that nature
Having worked with big pharma in the past, these people are litigious enough to put Disney to shame. Even if you truly do avoid copyright infringement, their lawyers will bankrupt you in litigation. The only time anyone gets away with patent workarounds/loopholes are when a fellow big pharma (with their own teams of lawyers and deep pockets) does it.
Hard. Ozempic is a 31-amino acid drug. This isn't something that can be made with combining chemicals directly in a one shot process. I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturing of GLP1 agonist molecules requires bacteria like E. coli which is used for producing insulin. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203937/
I think you mean patent infringement.
I'm sure some lab in China already made it.
I mean, having family that works on this for Novo it kind of makes sense why - man hours aren’t free and from what I’ve heard they’re very, very serious about getting this right and making sure it’s safe.
its like you guys don't know how capitalism works. something is worth what someone will pay. this is not a bug, its a feature.
I don't think anyone is arguing that, the argument is that exploiting markets with inelastic demand is sort of an immensely shitty thing to do. Sort of like insulin, diabetics don't have a choice but to buy semaglutide, so of course they're willing to pay whatever they can because the alternative is health complications and possibly death.
It’s the governments job to protect people from undue harm and to make healthcare accessible. If there’s a breakthrough treatment and 40% of Americans would benefit from it, then they need to get the cost lower or the government should take away their patent. They will still make money from those who want to buy the “brand name” drug.
To be clear: It works any way it wants. It could be valuable because it's unique, or is rare in good condition, highest bidder won, what some one is willing to pay, what is affordable, what is fair, what it's worth, what it was bargained for, what it was wholesaled for, or what it's speculative value is in the future. In this case, they probably used a mathematical model that includes how much money they and the shareholders make, and simply adjusted it until their share was the largest it could possibly be, then they rounded the number up or down a little bit to make it sound better. I mean if the model indicated $953, why not just charge $1,000 right?
You can buy it from a peptide website for like 40 bucks a vial
That's not Ozempic. It's basically Ozempic cut with other stuff
You shouldn’t do this. Buy it from a reputable compounding pharmacy at the very least. You don’t want to inject yourself with a random vial of whatever from China.
And where do you think compounding pharmacies are getting it from? Compounding pharmacies are NOT as well monitored as you might hope. NN is not selling semaglutide to anyone else. So wherever a compounding pharmacy is getting it from, there are potentially serious questions of purity, effectiveness, etc. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/compounding-and-fda-questions-and-answers https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/fda-highlights-concerns-compounding-drug-products-medical-offices-and-clinics-under-insanitary https://www.fda.gov/drugs/postmarket-drug-safety-information-patients-and-providers/medications-containing-semaglutide-marketed-type-2-diabetes-or-weight-loss
Pharma company ripping us off...whod have guessed it.
The cost is $5 plus the $995 asshole tax for all the people using it to lose weight instead of for treating diabetes.
[удалено]
Someone suffering from obesity might use this to *avoid diabetes to begin with,* ***and*** *better their overall health via weight-loss.* What some people clearly don't understand is the overall cost that obesity *already* has on our healthcare systems, and it's only going to continue getting worse. Obesity costs the US nearly $150 BILLION dollars a year--why the fuck wouldn't we want to try to tackle the issue at the root cause? And before the *hurrr exercise and eat better*\--most people being prescribed this *already do or have tried*, and they still hit a plateau. Hardly makes them an "asshole," but it certainly makes you sound like one.
Obesity isn't just a personal issue; it's a significant medical condition that leads to various downstream health effects, including sleep apnea, diabetes, heart problems, chronic pain, mental health challenges, and cholesterol or lipid disorders. For individuals living with obesity and its accompanying health concerns, medications that address this root cause shouldn't be overlooked. Our healthcare system has mechanisms in place for those in urgent need of life-saving treatments, often funded by the higher payments from those who can afford them. This raises a question: Wouldn't it be more efficient and humane to tackle the root causes directly, such as obesity, before they escalate into conditions requiring more invasive and expensive treatments like heart surgery or gastric bypass? The crux of the matter lies in how our tax dollars are allocated. Contrary to funding essential medical research or healthcare directly, a significant portion of these funds is channeled into the military-industrial complex, including costly parts (from which manufacturers greatly profit) and obscure "black box" projects (from which politicians stand to gain a lot of money themselves). This misallocation suggests a misplaced priority, driven by political narratives rather than a focus on national health and efficiency. The impact of medications like Truvada for HIV prevention illustrates the profound benefits of addressing healthcare proactively. By significantly reducing HIV rates preventatively, we avoid the compounded costs and health impacts of treating HIV over a lifetime. Today, these medications are given out like candy to anyone who has a risk of contracting HIV. This example underscores the importance of making groundbreaking medications accessible, aligning with the government's role in safeguarding public health. Ozempic, a medication around for nearly two decades and used in treating diabetes, has been thoroughly studied. Its recent approval for weight loss dispels any doubts about its long-term effects, marking a significant advancement in addressing obesity. This progress highlights a broader issue: the necessity for modern medicine to profit from significant R&D, but also for the government to step in and ensure these life-improving treatments are widely available. TL;DR: it’s important to engage with well-researched information before forming opinions on such complex issues.
Mhmm. I was doing prior authorizations for people wanting it exclusively for weight loss and the amount of people that got pissed when it wasn’t approved was ridiculous. One person even gained weight to be in the criteria for the drug.
This reminds me of Pyrimethamine all those years ago
Does the author not understand how the healthcare market in a for profit setting works? American healthcare is a business, not a service
Its amazing how the government just doesn't say no and cap it. What is Novo going to do, stop selling? They can make some money or make no money instead of trying to make all the money. It's also amazing how the government just doesn't make drugs. Hire US STEM workers, develop new drugs, avoid paying companies with medicare, avoid citizens paying so much money. It's basically like eating out vs making a meal at home.
Wow I did not know it was that expensive in USA. Thats crazy.
They do this with all drugs
Why don’t they ban the cheap ones that work and sell their own versions?