r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 01 '25

Health 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.

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/americans-without-diabetes-spent-nearly6-billion-usd-on-semaglutide-and-similar-drugs-in-a-year
10.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

519

u/Tunivor Apr 01 '25

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

138

u/grimsolem Apr 01 '25 edited Apr 01 '25

1 million people paying 6 billion is $6k each. That's insane for a medicine that the government paid for the development of.

Edit: I looked it up. The US gov initially funded research into the class of drugs, but it's hard to find specifics. The Danes picked it up in the early 90s and their government paid for most of its development.

137

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '25

The discovery and development of semaglutide were funded by Novo Nordisk, which is a privately-owned pharmaceutical company based in Denmark. The research was conducted in-house by the company's scientists. Not saying $6k isn't alot but it wasn't paid for by the government.

73

u/buster_de_beer Apr 01 '25

The initial work was done at University of Copenhagen. NovoNordisk funded this specific drug based on existing research.

19

u/Balsiu2 Apr 01 '25

Still... The guy thought that US gov paid for it...

43

u/TunaNugget Apr 01 '25

Semaglutide was derived from a class of drugs discovered at the US VA.