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Conversation has been slow here. I feel like the standards have increased to the point where people are afraid to post (except of course for bad faith posters who don't care).
So, let me try a post that's more of a conversation starter and less of a PhD thesis.
According to Bernie Sanders, it costs about $5 to make a monthly dose of Ozempic, the blockbuster-weight loss drug. Americans pay about $1000/month. Canadians pay $155. Germans pay $59.
The stock of the company which makes the drug, Novo Nordisk, has doubled since the beginning of 2023. (I considered buying in 2022 but didn't because I thought I was already too late 💀) It now has a market cap of nearly $600 billion, making it the most valuable company in Europe.
I assume that if companies were forced to charge the same price in U.S. as they do in Europe, the global pharma industry would become insolvent.
So why is the United States paying for > 100% of global pharma research? And how can we fix the glitch?
My complaint is the other way round: it's impossible to get Ozempic over here, because the demand in America for people who want to drop a few pounds without effort is so high, and from what you're saying American prices are so profitable, all the output is going to the US. Sucks if you're a European diabetic, but at least some neurotic woman who does gig-economy clickbait pieces can write about how she dropped two dress sizes and now looks like she spent a month in Bergen-Belsen after trying the hit new drug (I remember the same craze for Prozac in the late 80s/early 90s as a wonder drug that would solve all mental health problems, and the same kind of pieces by lassies hopping on the "it's the latest fad" bandwagon to write it up and sell it as a freelancer).
I have a family member with diabetes who recently switched insurance, and the new insurance had her doctor jump through a lot of hoops to demonstrate the drug was actually being used as medically indicated. It took a while for the back and forth to finish so she could get the drug. So it's not just across the pond that it's causing issues.
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