A lot of stuff can be made a lot cheaper than it's sold.
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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Before being an appetite suppressant, it is a medication for diabetes.
The problem is not the margin Novo Nordisk makes on an appetite suppressant, contrary to what the headline says.
The twofold problem is the margin on a diabetes drug, which weighs heavily on patients and health insurers around the world. And the potential supply problems for diabetics, when a vital drug is sold as a miracle weight-loss remedy.
This is of course their MO. They were making Insulin for pennies per vial for years and selling it for hundreds of dollars per. It's funny how they're allowed to keep doing this to us and they probably always will because the US right thinks the immoral thing is not letting vampires have a suck whenever they want it. Obesity and Diabetes are a couple of the largest killers around, to say nothing of the losses in Quality of Life they cause. It's just insane that we refuse to regulate prices for drugs that would relieve immeasurable suffering and death because CEOs gotta have a nicer Yacht or how is life any fair?
Wonder how much public funding was used toward the research.
nothing on this page mentions anything about Ozempic, semaglutide, or the amounts of funding received. the closest thing is a list of current diabetes research projects with, again, no amounts listed and no clear relation to ozempic.
They get you coming and going. Plaster the media with ads for junk food, then really grind you down when you are sick and unhealthy
You believe the fast food companies work in cahoots with the obesity pharma companies?
Sounds like a match made in hell
Exactly!
could be manufactured for 89 cents to $4.73 for a month’s supply
That compares to the monthly US list price of $968.52 for Ozempic, a weekly injection.
I got semaglutide (Rybelsus, the pill form) prescribed for type 2 diabetes. The list price in Spain for a 30 pill format (a month's worth) is around 130€ ($140) without discounts. Thanks to the prescription, I get it for free ($0.00)... which turns out to be closer to its actual value. Interesting 🤔
it's a polypeptide with two unnatural aminoacids, this aint rocket surgery. doses are in low miligram range, so still rather on the pricey side
The Egg of Columbus does spring to mind, reading your comment.
one of these aminoacids has a rather fancy linker attached to another two aminoacids, getting this to work was probably the hardest part of development of this compound. once you have structure it's a solved problem, esp with peptide coupling chemistry, it can be literally printed on solid substrate residue by residue (humans make it cheaper, greener and on larger scale tho)
- When do they lose the patent
- Can we please make drug companies lose their parents faster?
There should be a limit, like they lose exclusivity when they break even plus 5% or 10% of the total cost of RD or something.
10 % would mean that more than 9 of 10 research projects need to succeed. The reality is closer to 0.5 of 10, which would require a profit of 2000 % of R&D. Rules like that would stop private funded research. Which is something we can debate, but it should be noted that this would just mean, that countries need to fund medical research, which is currently 270 billion per year, which is 20 % of the US budget. If you want to stop private medical research, you need to raise taxes – plain and simple.
Then they'd just fake the costs of R&D. The US has lots of money, so everyone is charging more; notice how they charge way less in other countries (like $150-250, which is only ≈4,000% markup). That the US average income ($70K) is way different than the US median income ($40K), except for District of Columbia ($80K)... well, whose fault is that?
You can squeeze the rich for 2 years then it's generic
US states should probably set a price limit based on median income, like from Puerto Rico's $20K/yr, to District of Columbia's $80K/yr:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_median_wage_and_mean_wage
Price limits and such are fine but you can't beat generics for putting pressure on price.
True, but drugs do require some lengthy and expensive R&D.
Starting by isolating a target function, testing thousands of compounds in vitro, hundreds on mice, maybe a dozen on chimps, ~~soldiers~~, or ~~some minority~~... until human trials get approved, which normally take several years, until a drug gets approved for sale... then depending on how popular it becomes, sales may end up being larger or smaller.
Completely forbidding patents on drugs (AKA: government-allowed time-limited paid monopolies), would wipe out all private investors in that research.
Should all drug research be 100% government funded? That's how you get ~~corruption~~ lobbying.
Should the FDA controls —already not so tight— be removed? That's how you get snake oil salesmen (homeopathy, crystals, "praying it away", random herbal remedies, drugs cut with talcum, etc.).
If we still want the drugs to be developed, and be sold with a minimum of guarantees, the only reasonable solutions that come to mind, go through some sort of government intervention in pricing.
Those numbers will be manipulated. Good line of thought, keep working on the solution.
Yeah obviously, maybe a time limit then but that can also be moved somehow.. The only solution to greedy corps is a solid government...
This seems harsh. Maybe they should just lose their patents sooner.
It worked for Batman and he grew up wanting to help others.
If by “help” you mean buy cool toys and beat the shit out of people while wearing skin-tight rubber and lycra (not that I’m kink-shaming, mind)…
As Bruce Wayne he dumps a ridiculous amount of money into Gotham. Food banks, orphanages, hospitals, schools, employment programs, all funded by Bruce Wayne or Wayne Enterprises.
Any other city would be a utopia with the philanthropic support he gives; it's not his fault Gotham is literally cursed
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
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Ozempic could be profitably produced for less than $5 a month even as maker Novo Nordisk A/S charges almost $1,000 in the US, according to a study that revives questions about prices for top-selling treatments for diabetes and obesity.
The blockbuster drug could be manufactured for 89 cents to $4.73 for a month’s supply, figures that include a profit margin, researchers at Yale University, King’s College Hospital in London and the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders reported in the journal JAMA Network Open.
The study extends research showing how steep US markups are for GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy and underlines longstanding criticism of prices for diabetes therapies, especially insulin.
By some estimates, however, the reductions made those products more profitable because they eliminated rebates paid to pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen who negotiate prices for payers and employers.
State health plans and Medicaid offices are seeing growing bills for Ozempic and its sister drug Wegovy, raising questions about whether the increases in cost are sustainable.
In January, North Carolina cut off coverage of anti-obesity medicines for state employees, citing soaring costs and lack of agreement on pricing from drugmakers.
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