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Comment by InTheArena | Hacker News Reader

bear in mind, Ozempic is dramatically more expensive in the USA then any other country. The Pharma company has explicitly decided to price-gouge the United States. USA is 1300 versus 300 in canada.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-how-much-more-o...

So yeah, fsck these guys. I have _zero_ problems in that context with the compounders here.

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Additionally, semaglutide was developed as a drug for diabetes. It took a decade or so for NN to realize they walked backward into a giant money pit with the weight and addiction component and they are doing their damnedest to get every last cent they can before the patent expires. As is their prerogative, technically, but at this point I think this drug promises a real significant public health benefit that we haven't seen in our lifetime, especially around addiction and other impulse disorders.

Millions of peoples lives could be made better within months if this stuff was made freely available tomorrow. It would cause all manner of downstream benefits for society, in particular I think it would have a real impact on reducing some load on a healthcare industry that is buckling at the weight of our collective unhealthiness.

I honestly think the FDA should find a way to put the screws to NN such that they reduce the cost of this drug and license it at an affordable cost to the compounders.

All meds are. The US has to pay top dollar to subsidize the worlds drugs.

It does not have to. It chooses to pay higher prices to """subsidize""" the research that is already paid for by my tax dollars, and to help pay for """development""" that amounts to changing a drug from a mixture of both chiral versions to just the biologically active chiral compound, which somehow justifies another 25 years of monopoly for the exact same chemical.

They could barely be bothered to change the name because they didn't want to lose brand mindshare.

The vast majority of drugs have a positive ROI after two years on the market.

Almost all drugs currently on the market are older than two years.

And yet, prices are still much higher in America than elsewhere.

Therefore I posit that greed is the motivator, not ROI.

Don't fall for the propaganda.

You're right that drugs are generally more expensive in the US, but it's not because "the US has to pay top dollar to subsidize the world's drugs".

It's simply that companies charge more in the US because they can.

And the reason they can is that the US hasn't got its sh*t together to stop the drug companies from doing this. For this, blame your political system and the power that money has to influence your politicians and set policy.

Indeed, the US needs some good ol' fashion protectionism

It's worse. They want Ozempic for all through Medicare. At those prices that's 3 trillion dollars. As RFK Jr. put it, for $3T we could give every man, woman, and child in the United States three organic meals a day. Or pay for gym memberships, which would be even cheaper.

The President could issue an executive order saying Medicare won't pay a higher price than EU nations or Canada. If they want to raise their prices there, fine. But we're not going to be the ones paying through our nose because you think the American taxpayers have bigger bank accounts.

> They want Ozempic for all through Medicare.

Right. It seems pretty obvious who is behind all these media articles proposing these drugs being given to all overweight people.

The President has no statutory authority to issue such an executive order. We don't live in a dictatorship.

Medicare is provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is part of the Executive branch of the U.S. federal government which is answerable to... the President.

We don't live in a dictatorship, but the President absolutely has the power to say how much Medicare is willing to pay for a particular drug. President Biden could do this today, if he chose. The President can't say how much pharmaceutical companies may charge. But that's not what we're talking about here.

Nope. You're making things up. Just because the Department of Health and Human Services is part of the Executive branch doesn't mean they can obey an illegal order from the President.

Medicare is authorized to negotiate drug prices in certain limited ways. But that doesn't extend to setting a maximum price by executive fiat. Instead of posting nonsense you could try reading the law.

https://www.cms.gov/inflation-reduction-act-and-medicare/med...

An executive order directing the implementation of reference pricing is not illegal and is permitted under the ACA. Reference pricing includes being able to say, for example, that Medicare won't pay more than the cost of the same drug in Germany.

I'm not making things up, you're just ill informed.

https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title11/1115A.htm

Nothing in the Affordable Care Act of 2010 grants the President (or any part of the executive branch) the statutory authority to implement reference pricing or otherwise set a limit on the prices of prescription drugs purchased under Medicare Part D. Your citation of 42 U.S.C. § 1315a is irrelevant and concerned with entirely separate programs. For something more relevant see 42 U.S.C. § 1320f as well as the current CMS guidance. The law requires a defined drug selection and negotiation process which can't be overridden by executive order.

https://www.cms.gov/files/document/medicare-drug-price-negot...

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