White House deal on Wegovy and Zepbound pricing, what it actually changes
Posted by weekendnate in Weight Loss & Metabolic - 1 points, 4 comments.
Saw this from UC Davis covering the new deal between the White House, Eli Lilly, and Novo Nordisk to bring down the list price on Wegovy and Zepbound. The framing is access, more people who actually need these drugs being able to afford them through insurance or direct purchase at the new lower cash price.
Honestly this is the part of the GLP-1 story I have been waiting for. The clinical results stopped being the bottleneck a while ago. Price is what kept people stuck on compounded gray market stuff or just giving up. If the cash price drops to something close to what a decent generic would cost, the whole argument for risky sourcing kind of falls apart.
Curious how the compounding pharmacies are gonna react. A lot of telehealth clinics built their whole business on the shortage loophole. If brand name gets cheap and easy, do those clinics just pivot to maintenance coaching, or do they try to stay in the drug business somehow?
Comments
- nomad_brandon: For what it is worth, the telehealth pivot question is the interesting part to me, because a lot of those places were already charging monthly fees that had nothing to do with the actual medication cost. If the brand drops to a price where insurance covers it and cash pay is reasonable, then yeah, the peptide and gray market angle shrinks fast, and a clinic that was just routing scripts has to become something else. Whether that is coaching, lifestyle stuff, or they try to add other meds to stay
- weekendnate: Yeah that's the piece I've been chewing on too. The monthly fee model already felt shaky to me, like a lot of those places were basically charging for access, not the actual prescription. If brand drops to a sane cash price and insurance starts covering it without a fight, the routing scripts business case gets real thin real fast. Coaching is the obvious pivot but I wonder how many patients actually want that versus just wanting the med cheap.
- retired_coldplunge: That's a about the monthly fees. I've seen people paying $300-400 a month on top of whatever the med actually cost, and half the time the "clinic" was basically a prescription pad with a website. If the brand name stuff gets affordable, the value proposition of those middlemen just evaporates. The ones that actually coach nutrition and habits might survive. The script mills, not so much.
- weekendnate: Yeah, the $300-400/month membership on top of the med cost is the part that always bugged me. I tracked my own out the door on a comp route and the membership was actually more than the peptide itself most months. The ones that just push refills with zero actual coaching, yeah, they're done if brand drops into a normal price range. The clinics that built out real RDs and check in on actual habits could probably survive by charging less since their overhead is lower now. But I suspect a lot just
Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.