Insurance companies are in the process right now of trying to restrict coverage to anything but type 2 diabetes patients right now.
The average American household absolutely can't afford this -- but then again the cost of medical care due to comorbidities that result from obesity are pretty expensive too.
Some people are resorting to compounded versions of these drugs (which is a terrible idea, IMO) to save money as well.
I just bought a box of Saxenda (liraglutide) (5 pens + 100 needles) yesterday for $492 which is like the equivalent of $300USD and I didn’t use insurance or anything to pay.
All up including the cost of getting my Dr to do the prescription it cost me $511. Which where I live this is considered expensive because most medications are free except for certain ones like saxenda. The hardest part of accessing GLP1’s where I live is that I’m in a tiny country and the manufacturers only supplies a small amount, so waitlists for the drugs are like 5 months long.
Why is it so much more expensive in the US for these drugs? I’m struggling to understand how a place with a way more massive economy and no doubt higher demand, but also more supply, is paying these insane prices?!
> ...
> Why is it so much more expensive in the US for these drugs? I’m struggling to understand how a place with a way more massive economy and no doubt higher demand, but also more supply, is paying these insane prices?!
Yeah, this is one of the places where pricing is broken a bit.
I guess that GDP number has to come from somewhere.
> I just bought a box of Saxenda (liraglutide) (5 pens + 100 needles) yesterday for $492 which is like the equivalent of $300USD and I didn’t use insurance or anything to pay. > > All up including the cost of getting my Dr to do the prescription it cost me $511. Which where I live this is considered expensive because most medications are free except for certain ones like saxenda. The hardest part of accessing GLP1’s where I live is that I’m in a tiny country and the manufacturers only supplies a small amount, so waitlists for the drugs are like 5 months long.
I do wonder how long until we see more international sales of these drugs... Found a super high quality article on this from KKF[0] -- it looks like we may be making some progress on allowing more international drug importing soon.
[0]: https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/10-faqs-on-prescrip...