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obviously
anybody who believes pharma costs are justified by materials is… well, let’s just call them uninformed. It’s not justified by R&D costs or production issues. It’s justified by the stock market, by the CEO having a race with other pharma CEOs for the biggest bonus, and by no other thing.
Normally you can think of these prices as the reward to taking a risk. The chance of developing a drug and bringing it to market is usually small, and the reward should accordingly be high. However, in the particular case of Ozempic, the company attempted to develop a diabetes drug, and accidentally found that the drug works against obesity. That means that the reward in this case outweighs the risk by an obscene amount.
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.
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.)
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.
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?
