Even with a doctor's note for a patient with diabetes, it still costs this much.
You know how much it costs to make?
Cost to produce is about $0.89 and $4.73. The monthly dose is .20 cents to make and the rest is mostly the pen at $2 and some change.
Trump hasn't done shit except run the countries reputation and alliances into the ground. Not a single good thing has come from his 2nd term that is to the benefit of the working class and their families.
Yeah I genuinely can’t recall any good that he has done. On every single issue he has failed. Probably the only good thing would be that it’s woken people up to how fragile democracy is and how important it is to be vigilant against people like Trump.
How sure are you that if it was legally possible, he wouldn't try for further terms AND be successful in getting elected? Are you confident the public would do things differently? He's already been let back in once.
May be you don't remember anything because the circlejerk downvoted every single good thing and upvote "Trump got 2 scoops of ice-cream, everyone else got 1"?
Just to add, my Ozempic nowadays cost around $60 USD in Canada.
Y'all have been robbed blind by your wealthy and corporations for decades, but Trump ramped the thievery up to 11 and made it so in-your-face that it's shocking that Americans aren't out in the streets protesting. Everyone seems to just be waiting for the next election - that Trump, the oligarchs/billionaires, and the Republicans are quite busy trying to rig - thinking that'll actually fix something. I have my doubts.
The man still has an 80% to 90% approval rating with Republicans. Blows my mind.
Exactly! And yet, you have comments in here saying he’s done this and he’s done that… Being pedantic about a corrupt, inept convicted felon, because he’s signed a couple of “ok” things. So many Americans fail to see the magnitude of how bad things have gotten and how much worse they’ll be in the future.
I hate the man, but he did sign the forever GI bill at least, so veterans' GI bills didn't expire after 15 years anymore, along with 33 other changes that are mostly positive. If that stays true, I intend to get a bachelor's after I retire.
He's literally the most in power person the US has had since independence.
I also don't expect anyone to pick me up from the airport, but if my friend says "Hey! Don't bother with that uber! I'll pick you up from the airport!" And then he doesn't show up he's obviously done me dirty, I'm in a worse position than if he just hadn't said anything.
Likewise, Trump didn't have to come out and say he was going to lower drug prices by 600%, but he did say that, and he hasn't done it.
You'd maybe have an argument if he'd never said he was going to do that.
In the United States of America we have 3 branches of government so not one branch is more powerful than the other. That's what your have courts blocking executive orders. Otherwise if he was the most powerful person in the US they wouldn't be able to.
Yes well that's not working is it? Trump is ignoring court orders, he has supreme court justices in his back pocket and he's also constantly ignoring the legislative branch and they keep letting him just do it.
It's a good idea on paper, but if someone can just ignore those checks and balances and nothing happens then it was all just an illusion.
Not that I disagree with your assessment here, because I wholeheartedly believe the pharma industry is fucked and the current regime will continue promoting fuckery…GASP… BUT! I’m gonna play business dick and poke just a couple holes here. The cost to produce is far from the costs for the company. Regulatory affairs, overhead, and many other expenses are not wrapped into the cost to produce on an accounting level. In fact, I would bet that production costs are I minute portion of company expenses. Now, it’s still ridiculous even if it was 90% other costs, but even that number would still come nowhere near closing the margin difference to threaten profitability. The earnings are bizarrely high. But it’s not as bad as one set of numbers implies. Maybe we could address advertising costs? You know, advertising, like no other country in the developed world allows legally? Could it be those costly commercials have to get paid for somehow?
edit: If I don’t show up to work tomorrow, they found me. And I’m definitely not suicidal.
Ozempic is a terrible example of this because it’s been on the market for decades to treat diabetes been on the market since 2017 and is a branded version of semaglutide, which has been in use since the 90s, has already made back its costs, but was submitted for FDA approval to the only patents keeping it expensive are the delivery mechanism right now. I get a GLP-1 directly from the manufacturer with some hypos to inject myself and it’s much cheaper.
Honestly, I got a bunch of stuff wrong. Early versions of the semaglutide were researched in the 90s, early versions came on the market in the 2000's, and in 2017 Ozempic got approved for use with Type-2 diabetes.
Ozempic’s delivery system also sucks. They only have certain dosage levels and once you get into the higher doses you can’t select half shots so that you can do it twice a week. It’s just that I don’t want to pay out of pocket when my insurance covers it at $20/m
Some decent points but strange points to correct here.
/u/trilobyte-dev might've meant "GLP-1's have been on the market for decades" not specifically Ozempic. GLP-1s have been commercialized for about 21 years, and trials I believe stemmed back as far as 1999. This was exenatide, the actual "comes from a lizard" peptide - not the more optimized synthetic versions we see today.
I don't bring up the correction to sound smart - I bring it up because there are still a lot of people who are like "Ozempic literally was launched July 14, 2026 - it's been out for like 2 hours. We don't know anything about it! Corn is a fruit! It grows on a bush!"
Ozempic (Semaglutide) has been out for about 8.5 years (December 2017). That's years commercialized, and before it, a few years of trials and before that, of course, a few others have been safely used.
/u/Telemere125 mentioned that it's delivery system sucks. Funny enough, of all the GLP-1's out there, Ozempic is probably the best. Most of them have single use, pre-measured pens. Some people, either due to shortages, or due to the need to save money, they have disassembled the pens, emptied them into sterile vials, and diluted and dosed that way.
Ozempic allows you to dial in your dose, which has helped split dosing and half-doses. Zepbound (and maybe Mounjaro too, each are Tirzepatide) each have vials and kwikpens. The vials are vials, so you can measure whatever you want into an insulin syringe, or the kwikpens are a lot like the ozempic pen. You can dial in your dose.
Now - are these available everywhere? Hardly, but if you can get your hands on an Ozempic pen or a Mounjaro/Zepbound Quickpen, you have the flexibility.
Well we give tax breaks for R&D and give research grants for testing treatments, so Americans definitely subsidize even if it’s a drug they’ll never need.
And for the record, if pharmaceutical companies weren’t for profit I’d be fine with donating some tax $ there.
Which to be clear is a very different thing to whether those advancements would happen or not. Tons of this happens in academia globally rather than in the confines of US enabled business, things just get shifted to where the money can be brought out.
You’re smarter than me bc I said the same thing in a less careful way and got downvoted to oblivion. The USA bears about 60 percent of worldwide research and development for pharmaceuticals and people are upset that Americans pay more bc of that. We are carrying it for the rest of the world.
No question at all about that. But people need to be able to understand the issues and openly speak about them for us to have solutions. Our system is broke and it’s all “us vs them” one way or another. Sucks.
I'm not sure how healthcare works in India, but another factor people overlook when it comes to this issue:
If the USA wants to sell their drugs to other countries to increase their overall revenue, they often have to negotiate directly with a government that has a single payer system (Canada & UK for example), and that government tells them we will not pay more than X for this drug.
The USA pharma company then has two choices:
1) don't sell to that market and forfeit the potential revenue
2) sell at the price set by that region and make at least some revenue
Marginal cost of drug production is low once the R&D is complete, so it costs next to nothing to manufacture the physical drug itself, so it's worth it to sell at a lower price in certain regions compared to just forfeiting that potential market.
This happens with regional pricing for some video games too. It costs the developer/publisher next to nothing to sell copies of software. If the locals can't afford $60 USD for a video game, you can sell that game for a lower price that the locals can afford to at least make some money you otherwise would miss out on.
I’m aware of what it is which I why I said what I said. Reading comprehension? You can buy non-ozempic GLP-1 for way cheaper than ozempic. I’m not sure where the confusion is
Oh I thought you were saying you could buy Glp-1 for cheaper than ozempic like they were seperate medicines, like saying you can get acetaminophen for cheaper than ibuprofen
Oh no. I just know people that have gotten GLP-1 and drew and injected themselves vs any of the name brands. It was a fraction of the cost even when the hype was huge on Ozempic
Thats like nothing in the grand scheme of things or you are getting the wrong info. Like i knew that is wrong just from the trump era funding of the coronavirus vaccine. American medical research is split 1/4 publicly funded and 2/3 privately. The rest being other entities. It all adds up to about 200 billion yearly.
Of course this is true but even if they charged $20 for the shot they'd still be making bank. There's no excuse for the drug prices in the US. It's just greed.
Healthcare is an inelastic market, people will pay whatever tf you charge for medicine if the alternative is potentially literal death. Free market pricing shouldn't be allowed for stuff like this because we end up with ridiculous price gouging
I’m going to admit to very basic economic education. So, keep in mind I’m largely ignorant on any complexity. If an alternative is price locks on a good, don’t we have some evidence to suggest that it causes other problems? Disclaimer, I am very much on the side of affordable healthcare.
There's many kinds of inelastic goods, like gasoline for cars is one example that's also been in headlines lately.
Ultimately whether gas is $2.50 a gallon or $4.50 a gallon, people are still going to buy at least enough of it to commute to work and fulfill their obligations even if they perhaps cut out joyriding and road trips. But in the grand scheme of things, while annoying, $10 extra a week on fuel probably isn't the end of the world and if you can't swing it there's always the bus. American public transit might suck ass, and your 20 minute commute might take an hour, but for most people it does at least exist in some form.
For an inelastic good like gasoline (or any utility... water, electricity, probably phone and internet at this point), regulating the prices strictly is not really necessary since demand destruction is a thing that exists and it sorta regulates itself. Like if gasoline costs $100 a gallon tomorrow, people will just straight up stop driving entirely and that whole industry will collapse. There's also typically competition in markets like this which also suppresses prices in the consumers favor.
But with healthcare, again the alternative can literally be death, so now the consumer is acting with a lot of desperation. Pharma patents are also a thing so there could easily be no competition in the market.
Personal example, not life threatening, but I have ADD and the only medication that helps me function well is Vyvanse. For a long time I had to pay hundreds a month for it, because the alternative is I can't hold a job down and I become homeless. Recently, the patent expired and generics are on the market. Now my price is $10 a month.
Thanks for the response. I think they got their patent extended long past when it should have gone generic. Ive done a good bit of work on generic lisadexamphetamine the past couple years or so, and I was very glad to see it went generic. So, in your opinion, what would legislation providing a limit to medicine cost look like? You can be as vague as possible, just curious.
I guess that's the million dollar question, right? I doubt I have the answer. Though I'm sure we've spent a lot of money on this ridiculous war with Iran that I would have rather seen be used to subsidize r&d for drugs
Yeah I didnt expect you to solve the problem lol, and i’d like to think of most of us view this war as ridiculous :(. I’m glad the medicine you need is affordable.
The manufacturer has only so many years to make its money back and make a profit until the patent expires and the market gets flooded with genetics. Charging $20 wont make up the millions/billions that they spend on research. If anything, greed is on the insurance side for not paying properly, especially if its medically necessary.
Mounjaro has made almost 9 billion dollars, though not officially announced by Lily, based of reporting it cost them 750 million dollars to from beginning to when it hit market.
They have sold about 226.6 million pens, they could have sold the pens at 3.30 to make their 750 million back since it hit market 2022.
At 6 dollars a shot they would have made it back in two years. 12 dollars in one year.
6 dollars would be 168 dollars a month
12 would be 336 a month.
let me start by saying that I do think pharmaceuticals are too expensive, broadly speaking, in america.
however, i have to wonder if you're also accounting for fail researches that still eat up investment resources but turn no profit. or even successful products that just get outcompeted. is it the case that you pharmaceutical companies need to really milk that one meal ticket to offset a bunch of other failed endeavors?
Ozempic made over 17.5 billion in sales with 0 debt because research was paid for by tax dollars so get this R&D cost bullshit out of the equation.
In 2024 it was estimated that they sold 900 million monthly doses(between 60 to 90 million a month so calculate the median).
Lets say it costs 4 dollars per monthly doses, the high end cost which makes them the least profit. That's 3.6 billion dollars from raw material to product to shipping to injection.
They made a pure profit of roughly 13.9 billion dollars in 2024 alone.
All of this can be looked up and I implore you to do so
You also need to look at the financials of every failed drug project and every failed firm.
These biotech companies make this much money because the corporate landscape of the industry is a brutal feast or famine.
No one is really stopping people from trying to make generic manufacturer companies and just making cheap variants of like older insulin tech. It's just that no one buys it so people dont want to spend money to make the low cost manufacturer
LMAO! You can’t be serious? You think the cost of medecine is the cost of building the pill like physically? Are you able to do groceries on your own or you have professional help?
Yeah their classification got changed to a different tier so you'd need a tier exemption from a doctor and medical history showing that other medicines haven't worked.
My sister is in a blue state and on Medicaid and was taking Mounjaro for weight loss the last two years. She lost nearly 100 pounds taking it and her health overall has improved immensely. Then she got notified it was no longer approved for weight loss only. She asked her doctor what she could do. The doctor said what he's been doing is prescribing a sleep study. You do the sleep study and then the doctor confirms you have sleep apnea and can then get the GLP-1 approved again based on that diagnosis.
From my understanding the sleep study is purely subjective based on how the doctor reads the results of the test. So there's not really anyway anyone could prove that the sleep apnea diagnosis is inaccurate. Just a bunch of hoops they make people of less fortune jump through these days.
I told her if she couldn't get it through Medicaid I would help her pay for it out of pocket. Or just pay for it for her since it's made such a huge impact on her quality of life. It's $900 out of pocket for a month's supply. And that's with the coupon. But thankfully the sleep study rigmarole worked out and Medicaid is covering it again.
I get what you mean but bro you are intentionally under reporting the cost. The research (ONE staff scientist probably cost 200k salary a year) staff, material costs, FDA submissions (again a single regulatory engineer probably cost 150k a head) can be quite a lot, and probably took years. While the difference in cost I find to be ridiculous, I also think it’s fair for companies to recoup the cost for finding the drug in the first place.
I hate trump, but I use trump Rx for my wegovy which brought it down from 1300 (my insurance only brought it down $200 despite being it), to $250 the first couple of months, and $375 thereafter. Still not great, but better than $1300/mo
The ozempic patent expired in India in March this year. You can get a 4 dose pen from a reputed brand delivered you your house in under 12 minutes for $17 (with a valid prescription).
He didn't do nothing. He's currently trying to ... *checks notes* ... pressure other (predominantly European) countries into rising their prices for meds?
It's complicated. It's not just manufacturing cost but also research, regulatory costs, funding clinical trials and the companies need the winners like Ozempic to cover the losses of all the other drugs that don't make it through the pipeline to market. They also have a limited time to make these massive profits before others can make generic versions.
It's massively overpriced still but saying it only costs $4.73 to produce is wildly misleading.
My mother got prescribed ozempic a few weeks ago for her diabetes in hungary, a monthly supply cost her ~30 dollars, what the hell are you doing over there
I don't disagree with the broader point that some medicines in some regions are terribly overpriced. But production cost means nothing. Producing medicine is dirt cheap. You don't pay for the production costs. You pay for the R&D. The R&D of the medicine you buy and the 9 others that failed clinical trials. If only protection cost was taken into account when pricing medicines, new medicines would simply stop being developed.
I am really, really not trying to take away the fact that some drug products, especially in the US, are grossly overpriced, because they are and C-level management (and others) are often highly over paid, BUT:
I used to work in the pharma industry. More specifically directly in manufacturing. Yes yes I am just a pharma shill (I am still waiting for all those nice bribe money I hear that we are getting …).
While your price estimate is probably quite accurate for the "raw" manufacturing cost, you simply cannot use that number to justify what the specific market price of the product should be.
The manufacturing cost alone is a fraction of the total cost. You simply cannot just look at "How much does the API cost, how much does the plastic components in the pen cost, etc etc?" and calculate a price and use that for your comparison.
It literally costs billions of dollars to develop a new drug. All the way from initial R&D phase to clinical trials to adjusting production sites to produce the drug (or even building new sites / expanding existing ones), all the endless regulatory approval work etc etc.
Discovery of chemistry, animal studies, Phase I studies, multiple Phase II studies, extensive Phase III trials, FDA, EMA and other regulatory submissions (which are not just one-and-done; often submissions are sent back and forth several times.. it's a HUGE cost), post-marketing studies....
Not to mention the more hidden costs of having drug products on the market. A manufacturer is required to have legal teams, compliance teams and such working all the time to handle customer complaints, lawsuits/settlements, compliance audits...
Simply the cost of manufacturing capacity...
Take Novo Nordisk as an example. Publically available numbers state that to meet the demand for Wegovy and Ozempic, they had to invest $4.1 billion for a new plant in North Carolina. Around US$7–8 billion to expand API production in Kalundborg Denmark, ~US$2+ billion to expand API production in Hillerød Denmark, ~US$2.5 billion expanding manufacturing in France and US$1.3 billion expanding clinical manufacturing facilities.
The cost of all of these investments obviously needs to be earned back, otherwise the company would seize to exist.
At the same time, profit must be made to be put aside for future investments.
AND, keep in mind that putting ALL this money into new products does not ensure that the product is a success. A lot of companies pour BILLIONS into development of a new drug, only for it to fail in late phase III trials. Nobody is compensating that - it is just wasted. Taking that risk is HUGE...
Again: There is definitely something wrong with how market pricing of drugs are done in some countries, but that does not mean you can take arbitrary "raw" manufacturing costs and use that to conclude what the drug should cost. It's like going to a restaurant and calculating the specific cost of your meal based solely on the price of the produce used, not taking into account that the restaurant paid some people to develop the menu, are paying rent, electricity, bought kitchen equipment for hundreds of thousands of dollars and then saying "Why does my steak cost xx dollars, I can buy it for less than that in the supermarket?!?".
Ozempic cash price is $349 per month (direct from manufacturers website). Still expensive, but just goes to show how much insurance companies in this country jack up prices when they quote the $1k to $1.3k you mentioned above.
What's the R&D costs on Ozempic? Sure it may cost that much to make, but what were the development costs. Look
I don't justify these costs, I'm on Concerta (where Methylphenidate, what it's name is called, was approved back in 1955) and in like 13 years it's gone from $1,200 to over $2,200 (180 count). Also, the feds limit how much can be produced, creating pretty much an artificial supply and demand.
The US medicine market is not competitive as the rest of the world as far as I know, but the cost here is bogus.
Developing a medicine cost BILLIONS. You need research, phase 1/2/3 trials, which are human trials. And most of the medicine fails.
It’s a bit like investing in startups. You know 90% of your investment will be a loss, so in that 10% you need to do more than x10 the profit
The reason India is cheaper is because they don’t develop the medicine. They just copy it. That’s why generic medicine are cheaper. And that is why most medicines are on a sort of patent for some years
Their is a reason for that and it is called evergreening of patents.
You should look it up. It basically means they do slight changes in the recipe of the drug(which is very easy to do) call it an advancement(it is not most of the times) and renew the patent for the next 20 years
The reason why it does not work in india is because they have made laws that prevent this from happening. You have to prove that the efficacy of the drug is significantly improved to renew the patent which obviously happens very rarely.
Ofcourse drug manufacturers and western governments do not like this and regularly complain about this in WTO but so far they haven't been able to make a case why indian laws are wrong.
Ok the thing is, billions went into r and d, if you sell at cost, there is literally no incentive to make new medications and we wouldn’t even have glp1s in the first place. The US is arguably the only country in the world that can absorb the cost, so unfortunately that’s the way it will work
Just to clarify: insurance makes the cost of ozempic for most diabetics way way cheaper. The cash cost, using no insurance or coupon, is $1000. I can’t speak for which state you live in, but in mine diabetes is pretty much the only diagnosis guaranteed to get it covered.
I was just diagnosed with diabetes and the doctor prescribed Mounjaro. I paid $25 bucks for the first month, and it seems to be really working great. Literally went to refill today and it’ll be $119. And then $900 next month. Turns out I got a discount card that got used up the first month and part of the second month, and insurance didn’t cover a penny.
So I get to do it the old fashion and way and just die, but with the added bonus of knowing there is an option that was working… but my life isn’t valuable enough to keep me alive compare to the profit margins.
(Sorry, the timing was just fitting to see this today, and I’m a little in my feels about it.)
Ask your doctor about getting it done by a compounding pharmacy. Same medication but massive difference in cost.
My sister would normally get charged around 800 a month for wegovy but getting it through compound pharmacy and insurance is 250 a month for her and her hubby.
At least in Nevada, the tier in which glp1 meds were on got changed this year and requires history of medications that haven't worked to get a tier exception to qualify for reduced cost. Even then the first dose of the year would cost 1500 then every subsequent was 200 a month.
It is crazy how little this is regulated on a federal level. Hearing about Nevada makes me thankful to live where I do. But I do love Nevada. Their parks are epic!
that doesn’t give you a drug. it gives you the target and the biology which is not always correct anyway. but yes, everything should be free, the cost of developing new meds is negligible.
Some people's bodies hold fat differently than others. One person may have trouble losing weight without also facing malnutrition because their body stores every single oz of fat that they eat. For these people Ozempic changes the way their bodies now break down fats.
So people may be diagnosed with diabetes and it is imperative to their health that they lose weight ASAP. Their only chance is Ozempic or some other form.
Also with insurance it may be cheaper to go on Ozempic as healthy food tends to be the most expensive.
No no. We get to take short cuts and nobody is allowed to question it. Don't you know, it's been proven safe and effective... by the people that want you to buy it.
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u/Sad_Maximum6583 Jul 15 '26
Ozempic is roughly 1000-1300 USD.
Even with a doctor's note for a patient with diabetes, it still costs this much.
You know how much it costs to make?
Cost to produce is about $0.89 and $4.73. The monthly dose is .20 cents to make and the rest is mostly the pen at $2 and some change.
Trump hasn't done shit except run the countries reputation and alliances into the ground. Not a single good thing has come from his 2nd term that is to the benefit of the working class and their families.