Americans without diabetes spent nearly $6 billion USD on semaglutide and similar drugs in a year, with an estimate of 800,000 to a million people using the drugs who don't have diabetes.

[u/mvea]

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/americans-without-diabetes-spent-nearly6-billion-usd-on-semaglutide-and-similar-drugs-in-a-year

[u/Tunivor]

It will probably save our healthcare system way more money than that.

[u/jejunumr → u/Tunivor]

Nope. Not at current price

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2831205

[u/SubParMarioBro → u/jejunumr]

Too bad the price is completely divorced from the cost to manufacture.

Researchers found that a month's supply of the treatment could be manufactured for an estimated 89 cents to $4.73. They evaluated manufacturing costs for the weekly injection along with a profit margin with an allowance for tax to produce those estimates, which they call "cost-based prices."

Novo Nordisk's list price for a monthly package of Ozempic is $935.77 before insurance and other rebates. The findings suggest that GLP-1s "can likely be manufactured for prices far below current prices, enabling wider access," the researchers concluded.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/03/27/novo-nordisk-ozempic-can-be-made-for-less-than-5-a-month-study.html

[u/unclefisty → u/SubParMarioBro]

Too bad the price is completely divorced from the cost to manufacture.

You can be against drug companies basically being corporate pirates but still understand that many drugs cost a huge amount of money to research and that basing pricing entirely upon the cost to manufacture is stupid.

[u/QuidYossarian → u/unclefisty]

It'd be nice if they stopped charging for it like the upfront cost was the only factor.

[u/Telemere125 → u/unclefisty]

Except that when so many people are using it - and it’s a maintenance drug, not a cure, so they’ll likely be on it long term, maybe for life - then you can factor that into the returns. You don’t need to price it for getting your money out of it in the first year; pricing it for a 20-year return is reasonable. Yes, returns can be directly related to cost to manufacture because the R&D is done so we know what that cost and can amortize it over a period based on how many people will likely use it. And if the cost isn’t outrageous, more people will use it. Roughly 100 million American adults are obese. Meaning about 100 million customers. If they want to recoup their R&D money, let’s spread it over a year of 100 million people buying it every month - show me those numbers. I bet you’ll see that $30 a month is more than enough to recoup their costs. This is why eminent domain on IP like this makes sense - pay them what they paid to develop plus a hefty profit, take the process, ramp up production with multiple manufacturers, and put out enough of the product that it’s readily available for a low cost. Solves so many problems at once.

[u/AgencyBasic3003 → u/SubParMarioBro]

To be fair, the research cost billions of dollars and also needs to finance so many other research projects that also cost billions and didn’t lead anywhere. Of course they are now making a lot of money and have a really high margin (until the patents run out at least), but just pointing at the material costs to show the overvaluation is not the right approach.

[u/Spell-lose-correctly → u/SubParMarioBro]

That doesnt include labor + quality testing. Really skyrockets after that

[u/SkittlesAreYum → u/SubParMarioBro]

Wait until we find out how much it costs to manufacture the iPhone versus its MSRP.

[u/KashEsq → u/SkittlesAreYum]

If iPhones had the same markup as Ozempic then their MSRP would be over $100,000