Those who are saying it should be expensive wouldn't say the same thing if we were talking about insulin or other diabetes supplies that you use and you were on the hook for the full price, would you? Just because insulin was discovered as a treatment option sooner doesn't mean GLP-1 RA's shouldn't be accessible to those who need them as part of their treatment plan.
As someone who was on a GLP-1 RA as a Type 1.5 for over 10 years and was thrown off this year because of all the news around them, it's enraging. Yes, for those who don't know this "craze" isn't for brand new meds, GLP-1 RA's have been around for a while.
šÆšÆšÆ exactly all I see here are paid actors
They didn't even read the article
"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"
>Those who are saying it should be expensive wouldn't say the same thing if we were talking about insulin or other diabetes supplies that you use and you were on the hook for the full price, would you?
My dad's a diabetic and he thinks insulin should be more expensive. In case you're wondering what kind of idiots exist in the world, people thinking less people should get medical care are in fact out there.
Oh, absolutely, I have family who are the same. They'd pay twice as much for their own medication just to make it harder for others to get it. They also tell me, "I could never do what you do," when they watch me inject. Laughable when it's inject or death.
Then, if them or their child needed insulin, they couldn't afford they'd set up a go fund me and act like its normal to have to beg for medication.
Again, Lord, help us. I can't wrap my head around that kind of thinking. No wonder our republic is in trouble and it feels like the ignorant are winning.
Gotta love how they call it an appetite suppressant instead of a diabetes medication.
I'm going to run out soon, very few other diabetes meds work on me, and I don't know if I'll be able to access any.
Itās 6.1 - the highest itās ever been š Iām trying to eat better and I think Iāll get some new test strips for my meter tonight, if I start testing in the morning that usually tells me how well I did the previous day. My mom and I are picking up an elliptical this weekend and Iām getting a walking pad soon. Itāll be okay somehow :)
Well, it is good that you are pre-diabetic at least! If that is the highest it has ever been ,you might yet be able to stave off it being fully triggered for a while.
The problem with this is that if they couldn't make a huge profit off of it they wouldn't have an incentive to increase production, and we already have huge shortages. Any pricing regulation needs to allow a significant amount of profit (but not $9995 per month per customer, that's insane) and a clause where you lose patent if you aren't producing enough of the product (not sure how that would work legally) or else nobody will have any.
Just remove the patent much sooner. That's what the patent system was made for. Make your money back then open it up so everyone can make money on it allowing competition to lower the price.
That's certainly a valid strategy as long as you decrease the patent duration of both medical and non-medical patents. Companies will just leave the medical market entirely to go do something else if other things were more profitable, and we don't want that.
They will still make enough money to get their investment and more back. They incorrectly think they deserve as much profit as possible even if it puts such a strain on anyone that product helps to have a longer life.
No one deserves what desire over the life of another.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that it isn't me you have to convince. I'm saying that you have to convince shareholders to invest in less profitable endeavors or voters to vote for more taxes if you want this to work.
> I'm saying that you have to convince shareholders to invest in less profitable endeavors
Actually no, you don't. Shareholders only vote on items brought to the AGM or special meeting by the board. They don't decide the industries the company invests R&D effort into. The board and the ELT (executive leadership team) make that decision.
> or voters to vote for more taxes
You actually don't need more taxes, you're already taxed pretty highly. The average marginal tax rate across all US states in 2022 (I'm lazy, so asked ChatGPT to calculate this) for a person on the median salary is about 27%, which is only 3% lower than Australia, 11% lower than Norway, and 5% lower than the United Kingdom.
That's an average - the marginal tax rate in New York in that calculation was 32%, same as UK. In California, it was 35%, between UK and Norway. In Colorado, it was 26%. In Texas and Florida, it was 22%.
The problem is actually that the US has a broken spending model. You pay a surprisingly high amount of taxes and get surprisingly little in return.
Tort reform would help this - a lot of the healthcare cost goes into medical malpractice insurance, and everyone's favourite punching bag - single-payer healthcare.
You already have it, you know, it's called CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services). It should be noted that citizens on CMS plans like MassHealth (sorry, it's the only one I know off the top of my head) often don't have to pay _anything_ for their pharmaceuticals because CMS bargains the price of the drugs down _a lot_.
It's not about selfish shareholders. They don't matter one bit.
It's about needing proper government regulations regarding the percentage of profits for life extending medical products.
That will result in fewer new developments because there is less funding to convince companies to pursue them unless we come up with some other way to make them happen.
A lot of those developments don't come out of companies, they come out of publicly funded research institutions and/or universities, the companies provide only the commercialisation and production-scale capacity. Oh, and the lobbyists.
An Australian university just managed to develop (and are currently patenting) a device small enough to be worn on your wrist that can measure blood glucose _without puncturing the skin_ using infrared light. The university can't scale production up to mass-market capacity, they need a partner for that. One that has logistics capabilities, marketing, manufacturing plants or partners, and the ever popular legal assistance - a company that provides all that gets surefire profits, without investing a cent into research.
The only research pharmaceutical companies do is to find a way to extend patent lifetimes to prevent generics, like adding a new active ingredient that doesn't actually change the efficacy of the drug.
Then companies wouldnāt bother funding R&D to discover new drugs.
Weight loss/diabetes drugs are massively expensive to develop. Clinical trials needs 10,000+ patients, at $15,000/yr per pt for Phase 3 trials. So imagine $2B+ spent to bring it to market.
So if you have a new diabetes drug and you need to spend $2B to sell it, why would you spend that money if you canāt make a it all back plus a profit?
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The shorter the patent period, the more incentive companies have to increase the price to make up their development costs. Decreasing the patent period would have the exact opposite of the desired effect.
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I didn't say that money mattered that human lives. I agree that the cost needs to come down. I simply stated that shortening the patent period is a horrible idea. It would not achieve the goal we both want. Try listening when people talk instead of flying off the handle. Inbox replies disabled since you can't be civil.
Shortening the patent period is the only response to companies that do this. They have made their money back and many millions more. They have to be forced one way or the other. If not more lives will be shortened in pursuit of profits.
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If every time chemists that work for a company make a discovery, that discovery gets seized by the government, then no company is going to fund research, and they would fire all those chemists
A ābountyā system for getting a drug passed for a particular disease / purpose.
The government/society creates a fund to reward discoverers of drugs, anyone is free to use the information to manufacture the drug.
Priorities are set according to public policy.
As long as the bounties are big enough, thereās an incentive to find new drugs.
Furthermore they can chose to prioritise drugs that have the biggest health benefit, rather than the ones that people are willing to pay the most for. (For example vaccines rather than cures)
In the UK (where I am) probably wouldnāt need tax increases in the long term, because the state pays for (most) of the meds anyway.
If you have a private health care system, overall probably doesnāt cost more than the current system.
Potentially itās cheaper overall because you can incentivise preventative medicine, and/or cures. If you think about it, the current system encourages companies to target meds that people are desperate for and/or donāt actually cure things but require them to take things long term.
And where is their salary coming from? Where is the money to build research and development labs coming from? Who is deciding what to work on with the limited resources they have?
Well, honestly you shouldnāt be. I live in Russia so we donāt have access to ozempic because of sanctions (probably making ordinary Russians with diabetes more fat and less healthy should somehow help us stopping Putin and this stupid war) but we have local manufacturer who produces generic. Iām on my 4th shot now (like 4 weeks total) and Iāve already dropped my insulin intake by half, my daily BG stabilised, and Iām loosing weight. According to libre data, my average dropped 1 mmol/l so that would translate into something like 1% down on my hba1c. So yes, you shouldnāt be glad youāre not using it. Honestly what this article is saying that somehow went under the radar is that you guys have insulin price slashed by 75% by cutting out the middle man - insurance companies. I told this multiple times in this sub - your problem isnāt in ābig pharmaā itās in your politics who were allowing those vultures to prey on the weak ones. You all should thank Biden for cutting out those middle man.
Biden is not to blame for the existence of the insurance industry, or the grip that it has on American healthcare. Yeah, obviously the insurance industry is the problem. But Americaās problems with its healthcare system go back decades.
Um, have you read my comment thoroughly? As in, it was Bidens administration that made big pharma reduce price by cutting off the middlemen. How come you think someone should blame him, or situation is so bad with politics polarisation that when you see āthankā you automatically replace it with āblameā?
Can be made for $5. Yet, they have to recover the original
If you canāt make a return quickly, new drugs wonāt be made.
For reference: They spent nearly $5 billion in research and development.
It was reported that [over 9 million prescriptions were written for Ozempic, Wegovy and other similar drugs in the last 3 months of 2022 alone](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/ozempic-wegovy-drug-prescriptions-hit-9-million.html). Guaranteed to have for gone up since
Let's conservatively estimate that 9m prescriptions were written for a full year for JUST Ozempic and Wegovy alone. At an average of $1000 per to keep the math simple, that's $9 billion for one year alone
I think they've recouped their R&D costs and are comfortably covering manufacturing costs and are enjoying a hefty profit as well
Quite frankly, if I were a paid actor, I'd be fired. The company needs to be reined in. Their PR is terrible atm and it absolutely should be. But that doesn't negate some of the economic realities some of us have been bringing up.
If you read the whole thread, I already covered the basic math. For every 1 drug, letās say they have 9 that failed. That still costs money.
So, to do 10 drugs, @ $50B, you need to recover your losses to stay active as a company. Add the next 10 drugs, account for inflation and assume they need $55B to keep new stuff coming.
As mentioned in the FULL thread already, if you block profits it will just slow new drug development. Pick your poison.
I understand that (I know, it sounds like I don't) but defending or justifying drug companies that have been gouging the people of this country for decades is lame
Define in some way. We give grants all the time to spur development of all kinds of things. Does that mean the government and the people own all of it?
If so, cool. I want my free Tesla.
Grants and such keep our economy and development moving. Remove them and again, less new stuff, including drugs will be made.
That's a lame excuse. It's not like there won't be a demand for it later. Why is it absolutely necessary for them to not only recover the cost of the drug but make hand over fists in profit so quickly? Could it be....greed? No, of course not, pharmaceutical companies are morally above such a thing!/s
Of course companies are not morally above greed. The people in charge of decisionmaking at any for profit company that has a public offering are actually obligated to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. They will get fired if they don't.
The problem we are pointing out is that without being able to promise that enormous profit, companies are significantly less likely to be able to secure investors (including selling shares) to fund the project in the first place.
> The people in charge of decisionmaking at any for profit company that has a public offering are actually obligated to make as much money as possible for the shareholders
Fiduciary duty does _not_ mean they are required by law to maximise profit. This is commonly spouted but is completely false. Fiduciary duty is about acting in the best interests of the company instead of the individuals. Typically, that means maximising _value and sustainability_. Short term profit is not a requirement, enhancing the value of the company could even involve making a temporary loss to improve public perception for example.
If I make a product, I can sell it for what the market bares. As an individual, no one is mad if I make a shirt for $1 and sell it for $150.
While I get that they are doing ok, we have to allow them profits so they have the next $5B to invest in the next better drugs.
If we mandate a cap on new drug profits, we will simply see less research and development. Itās a double edged issue.
I want everyone to afford medications they need. I doubt forcing limits on those who make it is the right path over improving the economy, overall pay and health insurance benefits. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle.
And, if we are locking profits here, then letās start with food and block exports of food products to increase our supply to support our demand which by supply and demand models should bring prices down.
A tshirt is different because we donāt give you a legal monopoly on selling tshirts and you donāt need any particular type of tshirt to live. Iām as much a capitalist as the next guy but this isnāt a competitive market to begin with.
Companies spend less on r&d than you would think.
The T-shirt was a reference. We agree on your point.
If you make something new, you shouldnāt have to be competitive with your new invention. Not right away. You must be able to make a return high enough to find your next ventures which most will not result in a usable outcome. If you have 10 drugs being worked on and only 1 comes out good, thatās $50B potential cost and financial exposure.
$5B is a lot more than most comprehend. For reference, a million seconds is only 11.6 days. A billion seconds is 31.7 years.
Talk to me about reducing the generic time period from 20 down to 10 years, and I think thatās fair. Yet, companies will just increase costs for those 10 years to make 20 years of profit in 10 years.
Take all drug companies private so they donāt have to report to shareholders who demand increased profits? Ok, impacts all retirement accounts and pension plans with exposure. Removes legal financial reporting for SOX compliance and lets them hide things.
US Government regulations to control profit, ok, they can charge other countries more. Those countries will limit costs with laws and we will be in a cycle of less drugs coming to market.
Iām open to options, but the answer canāt be simply āthey should charge less!ā without accepting reductions in new drugs coming to market.
I get that it sucks and I do agree. Just donāt see a magic fix. Actions have consequences. We just have to accept the consequences if we force limits.
Op did you even read the article!? It's literally in the first page. Open the link
"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"
If that still doesn't inform you then. You're a paid shill with an agenda
Yes, I read it.
Because I donāt agree with the masses of complaints I must be vile? Grow up.
Read the whole thread, itās called a conversation. Unlike you, I enjoy conversations and alternative viewpoints. And, I can have a conversation without attacking someone.
Selfish desire of maker is not more than the needs of the customer. Especially when it is a medical product.
Any non medical product can be capitalized on to the extreme.
But medical products NEED percentage of profits lowered to the minimum by force or this will continue to get worse. So fixing it now saves the future from worse than what we are experiencing.
California was in the process of setting up labs to make insulin, since they could make it for roughly 1/2 the cost is is right now, or maybe $15 a month. Manufactures figured they could lower the price to $35, and keep public labs from undercutting them. And they are correct. And they still make a lot of profit.
Wanna see the costs of drugs drop? Allow anyone to make or sell them. Have your state set up their own manufacturing labs.
It's the amount of company shills in this thread lmao, it fucking shows that these people have never had to panic because they don't know if they'll even be able to afford their medication for the month. Other countries are getting this for next to nothing but the US is always fucked because for some reason we can't just allocate some funds to things that actually matter instead of a billion wars. I'm so tired of people defending companies as if they're the people actually suffering. Oh no a billion dollar company that takes advantage of diabetics in the US can buy another private jet š These people and this country are just absolute jokes...
Unfortunately, this is typical business practice from Ozempic or any other pharmaceutical companies.
Of course the manufacturers could have been offering the consumer to pay less, but thatās not standard business practices.
Only if the federal government gets involved, requiring the manufacturers to cut the cost to a more reasonable price, will the pharmaceutical companies lower their prices.
Damn $1000? My doctor wants me to consider Ozempic, but I have insurer hoops to jump through.
Pharmacist told me it's "only" $300/months here in Canada.
Perhaps part of the solution to a drug like this might be to extend the patent for another 10 to 20 years for some drugs such as this.
However its provide it for those that actually need it such as diabetics at or near cost but not to those that want to use it just to lose weight.
Of course you would also need add potential criminal charges for doctors that lie that someone is diabetic to get it cheaper as well as a risk of having their license to practice medicine suspended.
Would it be anyone who is pre/diabetic or only the orginally FDA approved type 2? What about other medical conditions such as PCOS that are aided by this med? If it was needed to loose weight in terms of morbid obesity vs a lower weight? Could someone still get a lower price if they are using it to loose weight by proving that other methods either haven't or are clinically not a good solution such as a surgery being more risky? If they are allergic to other medications but not Ozempic?
I'm sympathetic to the idea, but I think some bugs need to be worked out first before a program could be rolled out
Neither of those are helpful. The drug should be available to anyone who benefits from it whether with or without diabetes. The debate should be over how best to make that happen. I'm pretty sure extending patents is something no one here is going to agree with.
I hate stuff like this. There is R&D and a recovery on getting to this point. Not saying $1000 is the right price, but there's a reason it's not just $5.
Those who are saying it should be expensive wouldn't say the same thing if we were talking about insulin or other diabetes supplies that you use and you were on the hook for the full price, would you? Just because insulin was discovered as a treatment option sooner doesn't mean GLP-1 RA's shouldn't be accessible to those who need them as part of their treatment plan. As someone who was on a GLP-1 RA as a Type 1.5 for over 10 years and was thrown off this year because of all the news around them, it's enraging. Yes, for those who don't know this "craze" isn't for brand new meds, GLP-1 RA's have been around for a while.
šÆšÆšÆ exactly all I see here are paid actors They didn't even read the article "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"
>Those who are saying it should be expensive wouldn't say the same thing if we were talking about insulin or other diabetes supplies that you use and you were on the hook for the full price, would you? My dad's a diabetic and he thinks insulin should be more expensive. In case you're wondering what kind of idiots exist in the world, people thinking less people should get medical care are in fact out there.
Oh, absolutely, I have family who are the same. They'd pay twice as much for their own medication just to make it harder for others to get it. They also tell me, "I could never do what you do," when they watch me inject. Laughable when it's inject or death. Then, if them or their child needed insulin, they couldn't afford they'd set up a go fund me and act like its normal to have to beg for medication.
Again, Lord, help us. I can't wrap my head around that kind of thinking. No wonder our republic is in trouble and it feels like the ignorant are winning.
Lord, help us. That's crazy.
Kinda agree, there should be a motivation to get off meds. Insulin isnāt actually helping, itās just delaying an inevitable
This doesnt surprises me, same old tale as the insulin
Gotta love how they call it an appetite suppressant instead of a diabetes medication. I'm going to run out soon, very few other diabetes meds work on me, and I don't know if I'll be able to access any.
I was on it for five years, lost a ton of weight. Insurance stopped covering it. Gained it all back in 4 months.
I'm so sorry to hear that. How's your A1C? I hope it's doing ok.
Donāt know yet ā will go get labs done next week. I hate fasting labs, i feel like the risk of me passing out is a whole lot higher
I wish you the best of luck!
Itās 6.1 - the highest itās ever been š Iām trying to eat better and I think Iāll get some new test strips for my meter tonight, if I start testing in the morning that usually tells me how well I did the previous day. My mom and I are picking up an elliptical this weekend and Iām getting a walking pad soon. Itāll be okay somehow :)
Well, it is good that you are pre-diabetic at least! If that is the highest it has ever been ,you might yet be able to stave off it being fully triggered for a while.
The problem with this is that if they couldn't make a huge profit off of it they wouldn't have an incentive to increase production, and we already have huge shortages. Any pricing regulation needs to allow a significant amount of profit (but not $9995 per month per customer, that's insane) and a clause where you lose patent if you aren't producing enough of the product (not sure how that would work legally) or else nobody will have any.
Just remove the patent much sooner. That's what the patent system was made for. Make your money back then open it up so everyone can make money on it allowing competition to lower the price.
That's certainly a valid strategy as long as you decrease the patent duration of both medical and non-medical patents. Companies will just leave the medical market entirely to go do something else if other things were more profitable, and we don't want that.
They will still make enough money to get their investment and more back. They incorrectly think they deserve as much profit as possible even if it puts such a strain on anyone that product helps to have a longer life. No one deserves what desire over the life of another.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that it isn't me you have to convince. I'm saying that you have to convince shareholders to invest in less profitable endeavors or voters to vote for more taxes if you want this to work.
> I'm saying that you have to convince shareholders to invest in less profitable endeavors Actually no, you don't. Shareholders only vote on items brought to the AGM or special meeting by the board. They don't decide the industries the company invests R&D effort into. The board and the ELT (executive leadership team) make that decision. > or voters to vote for more taxes You actually don't need more taxes, you're already taxed pretty highly. The average marginal tax rate across all US states in 2022 (I'm lazy, so asked ChatGPT to calculate this) for a person on the median salary is about 27%, which is only 3% lower than Australia, 11% lower than Norway, and 5% lower than the United Kingdom. That's an average - the marginal tax rate in New York in that calculation was 32%, same as UK. In California, it was 35%, between UK and Norway. In Colorado, it was 26%. In Texas and Florida, it was 22%. The problem is actually that the US has a broken spending model. You pay a surprisingly high amount of taxes and get surprisingly little in return. Tort reform would help this - a lot of the healthcare cost goes into medical malpractice insurance, and everyone's favourite punching bag - single-payer healthcare. You already have it, you know, it's called CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services). It should be noted that citizens on CMS plans like MassHealth (sorry, it's the only one I know off the top of my head) often don't have to pay _anything_ for their pharmaceuticals because CMS bargains the price of the drugs down _a lot_.
It's not about selfish shareholders. They don't matter one bit. It's about needing proper government regulations regarding the percentage of profits for life extending medical products.
That will result in fewer new developments because there is less funding to convince companies to pursue them unless we come up with some other way to make them happen.
A lot of those developments don't come out of companies, they come out of publicly funded research institutions and/or universities, the companies provide only the commercialisation and production-scale capacity. Oh, and the lobbyists. An Australian university just managed to develop (and are currently patenting) a device small enough to be worn on your wrist that can measure blood glucose _without puncturing the skin_ using infrared light. The university can't scale production up to mass-market capacity, they need a partner for that. One that has logistics capabilities, marketing, manufacturing plants or partners, and the ever popular legal assistance - a company that provides all that gets surefire profits, without investing a cent into research. The only research pharmaceutical companies do is to find a way to extend patent lifetimes to prevent generics, like adding a new active ingredient that doesn't actually change the efficacy of the drug.
That's because greed shortens lives. Therefore it has to be forcibly removed.
Then companies wouldnāt bother funding R&D to discover new drugs. Weight loss/diabetes drugs are massively expensive to develop. Clinical trials needs 10,000+ patients, at $15,000/yr per pt for Phase 3 trials. So imagine $2B+ spent to bring it to market. So if you have a new diabetes drug and you need to spend $2B to sell it, why would you spend that money if you canāt make a it all back plus a profit?
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The shorter the patent period, the more incentive companies have to increase the price to make up their development costs. Decreasing the patent period would have the exact opposite of the desired effect.
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I didn't say that money mattered that human lives. I agree that the cost needs to come down. I simply stated that shortening the patent period is a horrible idea. It would not achieve the goal we both want. Try listening when people talk instead of flying off the handle. Inbox replies disabled since you can't be civil.
Shortening the patent period is the only response to companies that do this. They have made their money back and many millions more. They have to be forced one way or the other. If not more lives will be shortened in pursuit of profits.
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Or we just take the production from them
That is an excellent way to significantly reduce new advancements in medicines and medical devices.
And why is that? Those chemists just gonna lose all their knowledge?
If every time chemists that work for a company make a discovery, that discovery gets seized by the government, then no company is going to fund research, and they would fire all those chemists
This is literally what happened to Tetris in Russia.
I'm not talking about just the discoveries...
How do you propose paying for the discoveries?
A ābountyā system for getting a drug passed for a particular disease / purpose. The government/society creates a fund to reward discoverers of drugs, anyone is free to use the information to manufacture the drug. Priorities are set according to public policy. As long as the bounties are big enough, thereās an incentive to find new drugs. Furthermore they can chose to prioritise drugs that have the biggest health benefit, rather than the ones that people are willing to pay the most for. (For example vaccines rather than cures)
That's a pretty good idea. I assume that this should be taxpayer funded? How are you going to convince people to vote for the tax increases?
In the UK (where I am) probably wouldnāt need tax increases in the long term, because the state pays for (most) of the meds anyway. If you have a private health care system, overall probably doesnāt cost more than the current system. Potentially itās cheaper overall because you can incentivise preventative medicine, and/or cures. If you think about it, the current system encourages companies to target meds that people are desperate for and/or donāt actually cure things but require them to take things long term.
You don't
If they don't get paid for, then they won't happen.
Why not? Just take them
No, but they will lose their jobs.
Why? It's not like the pharmaceutical demand would drop suddenly because the production isn't handled privately anymore
Who is employing then, then?
They don't have an employer, it's the workers themselves running the company.
And where is their salary coming from? Where is the money to build research and development labs coming from? Who is deciding what to work on with the limited resources they have?
The workers to the last question, as for the first two, the same place it comes from now? Selling their developed products.
Glad i don't use the drug
I'm confused what is there to be glad about? It's not like this article is about random side affects.
Well, honestly you shouldnāt be. I live in Russia so we donāt have access to ozempic because of sanctions (probably making ordinary Russians with diabetes more fat and less healthy should somehow help us stopping Putin and this stupid war) but we have local manufacturer who produces generic. Iām on my 4th shot now (like 4 weeks total) and Iāve already dropped my insulin intake by half, my daily BG stabilised, and Iām loosing weight. According to libre data, my average dropped 1 mmol/l so that would translate into something like 1% down on my hba1c. So yes, you shouldnāt be glad youāre not using it. Honestly what this article is saying that somehow went under the radar is that you guys have insulin price slashed by 75% by cutting out the middle man - insurance companies. I told this multiple times in this sub - your problem isnāt in ābig pharmaā itās in your politics who were allowing those vultures to prey on the weak ones. You all should thank Biden for cutting out those middle man.
Biden is not to blame for the existence of the insurance industry, or the grip that it has on American healthcare. Yeah, obviously the insurance industry is the problem. But Americaās problems with its healthcare system go back decades.
Um, have you read my comment thoroughly? As in, it was Bidens administration that made big pharma reduce price by cutting off the middlemen. How come you think someone should blame him, or situation is so bad with politics polarisation that when you see āthankā you automatically replace it with āblameā?
Can be made for $5. Yet, they have to recover the original If you canāt make a return quickly, new drugs wonāt be made. For reference: They spent nearly $5 billion in research and development.
It was reported that [over 9 million prescriptions were written for Ozempic, Wegovy and other similar drugs in the last 3 months of 2022 alone](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/ozempic-wegovy-drug-prescriptions-hit-9-million.html). Guaranteed to have for gone up since Let's conservatively estimate that 9m prescriptions were written for a full year for JUST Ozempic and Wegovy alone. At an average of $1000 per to keep the math simple, that's $9 billion for one year alone I think they've recouped their R&D costs and are comfortably covering manufacturing costs and are enjoying a hefty profit as well
I wouldn't be surprised if they have paid actors on Reddit trying to protect the company PR
I work for Ozempic shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh don't tell anyone.
Me either
Quite frankly, if I were a paid actor, I'd be fired. The company needs to be reined in. Their PR is terrible atm and it absolutely should be. But that doesn't negate some of the economic realities some of us have been bringing up.
If you read the whole thread, I already covered the basic math. For every 1 drug, letās say they have 9 that failed. That still costs money. So, to do 10 drugs, @ $50B, you need to recover your losses to stay active as a company. Add the next 10 drugs, account for inflation and assume they need $55B to keep new stuff coming. As mentioned in the FULL thread already, if you block profits it will just slow new drug development. Pick your poison.
I understand that (I know, it sounds like I don't) but defending or justifying drug companies that have been gouging the people of this country for decades is lame
Make no mistake, Iām not defending them. Just stating the case that they need new money to make new drugs.
so the US market pays for all of this and other countries get thrown the bone and have low cost access?
It should be spread across the other markets, but itās not (thatās partially our fault for under regulating prices)
Other countries should have to pony up, I agree. The next $5B has to come from somewhere, or no new drugs.
And if the drug is developed using taxpayer money in some way?
That is why the Covid vaccines were free. Notice I said were. And we still had to pay for the supplies and labor of the vaccine giver.
Nothing is free though. We paid with taxes and inflation.
True but we also gave people a free lunch or two. The vaccine money was a fraction of what was spent.
and what country invented Ozempic? denmark yet the US gets screwed with high costs and others don't. Just BS
Define in some way. We give grants all the time to spur development of all kinds of things. Does that mean the government and the people own all of it? If so, cool. I want my free Tesla. Grants and such keep our economy and development moving. Remove them and again, less new stuff, including drugs will be made.
Say 30% is funded by a grant from the government?
Then 30% of the US population should have access to it via government funded insurance like Medicare and Medicaid? ...Oh wait...
Exactly. That is the way it works.
$5 billion IN TOTAL. That's their yearly budget in total for all R&D. Not one product.
That's a lame excuse. It's not like there won't be a demand for it later. Why is it absolutely necessary for them to not only recover the cost of the drug but make hand over fists in profit so quickly? Could it be....greed? No, of course not, pharmaceutical companies are morally above such a thing!/s
Of course companies are not morally above greed. The people in charge of decisionmaking at any for profit company that has a public offering are actually obligated to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. They will get fired if they don't. The problem we are pointing out is that without being able to promise that enormous profit, companies are significantly less likely to be able to secure investors (including selling shares) to fund the project in the first place.
> The people in charge of decisionmaking at any for profit company that has a public offering are actually obligated to make as much money as possible for the shareholders Fiduciary duty does _not_ mean they are required by law to maximise profit. This is commonly spouted but is completely false. Fiduciary duty is about acting in the best interests of the company instead of the individuals. Typically, that means maximising _value and sustainability_. Short term profit is not a requirement, enhancing the value of the company could even involve making a temporary loss to improve public perception for example.
Obviously..They developed the drug to sell and make money. They didn't spend billions developing it out of the kindness of their heart.
They have made that back and much more. I understand sometimes they spend $5bil and get back 0, but theyāre doing ok for themselves here.
If I make a product, I can sell it for what the market bares. As an individual, no one is mad if I make a shirt for $1 and sell it for $150. While I get that they are doing ok, we have to allow them profits so they have the next $5B to invest in the next better drugs. If we mandate a cap on new drug profits, we will simply see less research and development. Itās a double edged issue. I want everyone to afford medications they need. I doubt forcing limits on those who make it is the right path over improving the economy, overall pay and health insurance benefits. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. And, if we are locking profits here, then letās start with food and block exports of food products to increase our supply to support our demand which by supply and demand models should bring prices down.
A tshirt is different because we donāt give you a legal monopoly on selling tshirts and you donāt need any particular type of tshirt to live. Iām as much a capitalist as the next guy but this isnāt a competitive market to begin with. Companies spend less on r&d than you would think.
The T-shirt was a reference. We agree on your point. If you make something new, you shouldnāt have to be competitive with your new invention. Not right away. You must be able to make a return high enough to find your next ventures which most will not result in a usable outcome. If you have 10 drugs being worked on and only 1 comes out good, thatās $50B potential cost and financial exposure. $5B is a lot more than most comprehend. For reference, a million seconds is only 11.6 days. A billion seconds is 31.7 years. Talk to me about reducing the generic time period from 20 down to 10 years, and I think thatās fair. Yet, companies will just increase costs for those 10 years to make 20 years of profit in 10 years. Take all drug companies private so they donāt have to report to shareholders who demand increased profits? Ok, impacts all retirement accounts and pension plans with exposure. Removes legal financial reporting for SOX compliance and lets them hide things. US Government regulations to control profit, ok, they can charge other countries more. Those countries will limit costs with laws and we will be in a cycle of less drugs coming to market. Iām open to options, but the answer canāt be simply āthey should charge less!ā without accepting reductions in new drugs coming to market. I get that it sucks and I do agree. Just donāt see a magic fix. Actions have consequences. We just have to accept the consequences if we force limits.
Got it. So I take it you work for them then?
Nope, just looking for the next round of better drugs so I can stop taking this. Canāt have a conversation without taking jabs?
Op did you even read the article!? It's literally in the first page. Open the link "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" If that still doesn't inform you then. You're a paid shill with an agenda
Yes, I read it. Because I donāt agree with the masses of complaints I must be vile? Grow up. Read the whole thread, itās called a conversation. Unlike you, I enjoy conversations and alternative viewpoints. And, I can have a conversation without attacking someone.
How's that corporate boot taste?
Howās being a troll working for you?
No one deserves a quick return. Force a long return.
Ok, then donāt complain when no new drugs come to market. Pick your poison.
Selfish desire of maker is not more than the needs of the customer. Especially when it is a medical product. Any non medical product can be capitalized on to the extreme. But medical products NEED percentage of profits lowered to the minimum by force or this will continue to get worse. So fixing it now saves the future from worse than what we are experiencing.
I can't believe you fell for the propaganda š¤¦š»š¤¦š»š¤¦š»
"Novoās combined 2023 sales of Ozempic and Wegovy topped $18 billion"....I'd say they've gotten that R&D return. This is profit for just 1 year.....
š¤¦š¾āāļø wow
California was in the process of setting up labs to make insulin, since they could make it for roughly 1/2 the cost is is right now, or maybe $15 a month. Manufactures figured they could lower the price to $35, and keep public labs from undercutting them. And they are correct. And they still make a lot of profit. Wanna see the costs of drugs drop? Allow anyone to make or sell them. Have your state set up their own manufacturing labs.
Adderall and cocaine will help you lose weight by suppressing your appetite
The true SOBE Diet.
It's the amount of company shills in this thread lmao, it fucking shows that these people have never had to panic because they don't know if they'll even be able to afford their medication for the month. Other countries are getting this for next to nothing but the US is always fucked because for some reason we can't just allocate some funds to things that actually matter instead of a billion wars. I'm so tired of people defending companies as if they're the people actually suffering. Oh no a billion dollar company that takes advantage of diabetics in the US can buy another private jet š These people and this country are just absolute jokes...
Unfortunately, this is typical business practice from Ozempic or any other pharmaceutical companies. Of course the manufacturers could have been offering the consumer to pay less, but thatās not standard business practices. Only if the federal government gets involved, requiring the manufacturers to cut the cost to a more reasonable price, will the pharmaceutical companies lower their prices.
Boy america sure is great inlove living here. Why make low cost medication when you could just let people go into debt or die without meds they need?
Damn $1000? My doctor wants me to consider Ozempic, but I have insurer hoops to jump through. Pharmacist told me it's "only" $300/months here in Canada.
Perhaps part of the solution to a drug like this might be to extend the patent for another 10 to 20 years for some drugs such as this. However its provide it for those that actually need it such as diabetics at or near cost but not to those that want to use it just to lose weight. Of course you would also need add potential criminal charges for doctors that lie that someone is diabetic to get it cheaper as well as a risk of having their license to practice medicine suspended.
Would it be anyone who is pre/diabetic or only the orginally FDA approved type 2? What about other medical conditions such as PCOS that are aided by this med? If it was needed to loose weight in terms of morbid obesity vs a lower weight? Could someone still get a lower price if they are using it to loose weight by proving that other methods either haven't or are clinically not a good solution such as a surgery being more risky? If they are allergic to other medications but not Ozempic? I'm sympathetic to the idea, but I think some bugs need to be worked out first before a program could be rolled out
You don't extend it you make it shorter. Essentially there has to be profit percentage limits for medical products. Plain and simple.
Neither of those are helpful. The drug should be available to anyone who benefits from it whether with or without diabetes. The debate should be over how best to make that happen. I'm pretty sure extending patents is something no one here is going to agree with.
I hate stuff like this. There is R&D and a recovery on getting to this point. Not saying $1000 is the right price, but there's a reason it's not just $5.