How to Sell a $5 Drug for $1000.
We have all heard of Ozempic by now. Well, how about this:
Researchers found that a month’s supply of the treatment could be made for an estimated 89 cents to $4.73, figures that include a profit margin.
I know what you’re thinking, they spent all this money on research. Here is what Novo Nordisk said:
In a statement on Wednesday, Novo Nordisk declined to provide production costs for Ozempic and its weight loss drug counterpart Wegovy. But the Danish drugmaker noted that it spent almost $5 billion on research and development last year, and will spend more than $6 billion on a recent deal to boost manufacturing to meet demand for GLP-1s.
I am going to call bullsh$t on Novo Nordisk. I respect that research costs money but there is no way they spent $5 billion to create a “me too” diabetes drug. They just got lucky that it happen to work a lot better than its predecessors in weight loss. That is the ONLY reason this drug is so popular. They would never put that kind of money in for normal diabetes blood sugar control.
So, why is the price so high? I think they smell success in getting the US Govt to pay for it for our Medicare population. They can call it an obesity epidemic and they saw we already paid for the COVID vaccine and Paxlovid so why not Ozempic?
That’s your answer to how to turn $5 into $1000.
https://open.substack.com/pub/raymondkordonowy/p/good-god-almighty-which-way-do-i?r=v5y0p&utm_medium=ios
I wonder what it costs in Denmark?
We should pay the same