Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk facing pressure as study finds $1,000 appetite suppressant can be made for just $5
Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk facing pressure as study finds $1,000 appetite suppressant can be made for just $5
Literally almost every drug in existance.
Double pop! First time I've seen a privacy popup on top of a privacy popup. The top one you can only accept.
Extra privacy wow!
Ah I see they are going the Roku route.
Well you see… there’s the yacht, the yacht they have to land the helicopter, and the smallish yacht they use to go into port because berths at dock are hard to come by.
Oh and the. There’s the helicopter, the pilots, the mansion in every state. Except, uh, the ones that tax rich people.
It’s all part of the cost…
Have you seen all those hoes and bitches that get on those yachts and they all got their titties out and showing their ass and pussy. It's a great trickle down economy Ronny put together.
You forgot the biggest expense; the billions of dollars in stock buybacks.
"Don't think he knows about second yacht, Pip."
CAD$650/month in Canada. I've lost 36 Kg (80 lbs) and I'm still losing weight. My blood work shows no signs of diabetes, my cardiac indicators are also excellent, but my hemoglobin is low because I don't eat beef anymore (not because of the Ozempic, I haven't been able to digest it for about six years.) I'm taking an iron supplement to build it back up.
Ozempic sucks until you stop fighting it. After that it's an easy ride.
I'm wearing an XL t-shirt and large sweat pants today down from 3XL in both eight months ago.
Any side effects?
It acts by slowing down the emptying of your stomach. That means that whatever you eat stays in your stomach for many hours. If you eat too much at night or something that is acidy or spicy it causes terrible heart burn and reflux/regurgitation. I take an omeprazole with sodium bicarbonate at bedtime to relieve the acid.
I eat a granola bar or a couple of eggs for breakfast then a small bowl of whatever is on offer for dinner and that's it. My stomach is never empty. Sometimes, if I want to have something spicy or acidy I will have it for breakfast. I've had a fajita for breakfast and I once had chicken parm for breakfast. Then I eat something easy for dinner.
The most upsetting side effect was the fact that I went from a daily bathroom guy to every three or four days. I was eating so much less and my body was making such good use of what I ate that I just didn't produce much. It can cause constipation but you need to avoid taking laxatives because you can become dependant. Just drink lots of water, eat lots of fiber, and walk a lot and you will be fine.
If you fight it it's going to make you miserable. If you lean in you will lose a lot of weight fast. I've lost so much weight so quickly that my body freaks me out a bit. When I'm sitting on the edge of the bed and look down at my legs I don't recognize them. I told someone a few weeks ago that I just wanted a little candy because I'm fat and she said, "No you're not."
On the plus side I mentioned to my doctor that I was getting shorter (in in my late 50s and went from 5' 10 1/2" to 5' 9 1/2" and he asked, "Your penis?" I said, "No, that's getting longer!" He laughed and said, "It was hiding." I've actually gained an inch and a half of useable penis. (That's a happy side effect.)
Ozempic sucks until you stop fighting it. After that it’s an easy ride.
Are there plateaus like with other weight loss?
I'm not eating any solid food due to a medical issue (long story) and I have lost 80 pounds as well. My weight can drop very quickly sometimes, as much as a pound every few days. Other times, like recently, it takes a long time to go down. It's taken me a good two months to go from 190 to 180, whereas I was 260 at the start of January 2023.
If not eating enough period causes plateaus, I would think Ozempic would as well.
I plateaued in the low 220s for a month or so then the weight fell off me to the low 200s. I'm creeping down now at about half a pound per week. My ultimate goal was to get to 200 lbs but I'm now thinking that I may go to 190 lbs since the weight is continuing to come off. I don't want to go lower than that. I don't want to be a thin person. I just want to be less fat.
My husband plateaued with it and had to go to a higher dose. No idea how common that is.
That's pricey. Here in the UK, I think it's like..hmm... $256 CAD. Still expensive though which puts it out of reach for a lot of people to keep it up regularly.
76.58€, here. 30% reimbursed by social security, probably another 30% by your work insurance.
I think you mean Wegovy, because I pay $220 for Ozempic at Costco, coworker pays $280 at SDM (Loblaws gotta take their cut)
Rybelsus the pill form of Ozempic is more expensive but I heard it's in the $400 range similar in price to Mounjaro.
You've gotta be on Wegovy
Edit: Also based on your replies below you're losing too much weight for it to be 1mg of Ozempic. Sure you lose some weight at 1mg but after a couple months you plateau and some of the side effects you describe are more inline with Wegovy. I've been on Ozempic 3 years and it affects my life absolutely zero at this point. It keeps my blood sugar in the optimal range and helps me avoid the snack food aisle but that's about it
There’s a lot of mistrust with drug makers at the moment, for good reason and this is a great article on the breakdown of costs. They do have a point about recouping the cost of R&D but maybe they should be more transparent about how long it’ll take them to do so. MBAs are very good at pulling levers to make money, they just don’t think about the human element, which is the most important lever.
Two points about R&D costs:
First, they aren't just trying to make up what they spent on this treatment, but others that failed during research/trials. There's a lot of them the general public will never hear about, and pharmas generally don't like to bring attention to their failures. Part of that is many shareholders are morons who don't understand how science works.
Second, the costs can get fuzzier for larger companies who in-house much of the R&D process, since the costs get shared among many programs. Properly attributing spend in that case can be a serious challenge.
All that said, they've clearly seen an opportunity to rake it in with this trendy drug and are charging way more than they need to.
If these were nonprofit companies and all employees were paid at/below market rates I would not complain.
It is the profit and CEO pay that I object to.
Guys our government is broken.
As I read that they charge just 155 bucks in other countries I guess the high price lies in not having a suitable health care system. You can't have both, calling other countries socialists or communists AND having good health care by having the same contracts that we have. Sorry.
$1500. That's how much eight weeks of ozempic costs for me if I had to pay out of pocket.
How much to get people together to steal the recipe and set up a lab?
Bet its less than a five year supply, which is probably just a week or two between a group og interested parties!
There are gray market microlabs that will already make it for 1/3 the cost. Since so many insurance companies deny Ozempic for people who are pre-diabetic (which would keep them from becoming diabetic) and Wegovy for people who are obese and have cholesterol issues (again, can actually help with this) but they are not morbidly obese, people turn to these places.
Doctors say you need it and will help you, but insurance companies tell you “nah”. Yet for some reason they cover it for the endless amounts of yoga Karens who don’t need it at all.
Where is Walter White when you need him
Jesse! We need to cook.
I honestly don't get why so many people are so upset.
I get it with things like insulin where we know how to make it for years. But a new revolutionary drug? Sure their production cost is low but that doesn't include R&D and just think of how many drugs don't work. That's why when we do find something that works we can't expect it to only pay for itself, it has to make enough buck to basically pay for them as well, because why else even bother?
Most pharma R&D is actually done by the government. Unless they can prove it's an outlier there....
The government funds the first phase of the search. This is very important. But beyond that, the bill is footed by private sector.
A quote from this study:
The federal government is the primary funder of basic research in biomedical sciences through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This research is essential for informing all medical progress, including the development of therapies. Overall, 54% of basic science milestones are achieved by the public sector and 27% by the private sector. From that point onward, taking the necessary risks associated with the drug development process required to advance basic science research into safe and effective treatments for patients corresponds primarily to the biopharmaceutical industry. Performing Phase I through IV clinical trials consumes more than 90% of total research and development (R&D) cost.
A number of recent studies indicate that a majority of this R&D is funded by investments made by the private sector.1 In a 2019 report, Research America indicated that, in 2016, the private sector funded 67% of total U.S. medical and health R&D while the federal government supported 22%.
Seriously, no kidding but sometimes I think that people are still discovering capitalism
Guy looks like Bill Gates without hair.
Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos did the Fusion Dance
"Mo-ney Ha!"
So why didn't anyone else start manufacturing it for $5 about 15 years ago then?
Patents most likely.
Interestingly its always libertarian types defending patents; rather than being against it for being government intervention.
In either case patents and copyright need reform for today's economy.
It was only approved very recently. Manufacturing it years ago would have been a waste, because you wouldn't have been able to sell it.
That's the thing.
Developing drugs, from a theoritical cure for something to an actual approved drug, normally takes years and a lot of drugs gets scrapped during this process. You don't just have to prove that the drug is not causing more harm, your also have to prove how effective it is. There a lot of full time employee people involved in everything from developing the actual chemical to executing clinical tests.
I'm not in any way defending the way "big pharma" acts today, but all of this is more complicated than a guy suddenly saying "I'm going to create a drug that cures cancer" and then just does it in 2 years.
So out of the 10 drugs you pour a couple of millions into the development of, just 1 or 2 might make it through and get approved. If you're lucky. So even if it's just costs $5 manufacture that specific drug, the company still have to cover the losses from the other 8-9 that never made it.
Once again, I'm not defending all pharmaceutical companies. I'm just saying that the manufacturing cost of a drug that is approved is far from the actual cost.
And a lot of people in my country are hoarding lots of Ozempic shots. Please remember this is for DIABETICS, and not for everyday weight loss.
In other news water is wet
article doesnt present any pressure they are facing. also
Prices are never about cost, its what people are willing to pay. Which gets brutally exploited by pharmaceutical industry.
To be fair, drug development is pretty expensive. A lot of the budgets for it are public-because it happens at public institutions.