WHO says GLP-1 supply bottleneck could derail obesity fight, wants price cuts

Question

The Guardian is reporting on the WHO warning that shortages of GLP-1 drugs like Mounjaro, Ozempic, and Wegovy are now a serious global problem, and they want pharma companies to slash prices and massively scale up production so lower-income countries can actually get them. Honestly the pricing part is the only bit that really matters to me. You can ramp up production all you want, if a monthly supply still costs what a small car costs in some places, then the supply issue is kind of a distraction from the real one. Supply follows demand, demand follows price. Has anyone here actually sat down and worked out what these would need to cost per month to be sensible for long term use? I keep seeing people post amazing weight loss numbers but never the cost per kilo lost math...

optimized_lifter · Accepted Answer

The cost per kilo question is the right one honestly. Most people I see posting loss numbers never mention what they spent to get there, and those two things should be in the same conversation... I tried one of the GLP-1s for about 4 months through a clinic. The appetite suppression was real, no question, I dropped roughly 9 kilos and the food noise basically went quiet. But the price they quoted for continuing past my "intro period" was completely separate conversation from the results. When I divided what I paid for those 4 months by the kilos lost it came out to something I would be embarrassed to say out loud per kilo... And that is in Poland where it is already cheaper than US prices I keep reading about. For something you are supposed to stay on long term, I do not understand how the maths works for normal budgets. Have to wonder what the off-patent timeline looks like because until then this seems like a treatment for wealthier patients only, regardless of WHO supply talk 💉

nightscott · Answer

Lol at "embarr" cut short, my guy got hit by the character limit mid-sentence... Anyway yeah that's exactly my point, the per-kilo math is what changes the whole story. Roughly 9 kilos is solid but if you paid more per kilo than a decent cut of beef at ica then congrats, you basically bought expensive weight. What was the rough number you were paying monthly, was it the clinic markup that stung or the drug itself...

WHO says GLP-1 supply bottleneck could derail obesity fight, wants price cuts

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