Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk facing pressure as study finds $1,000 appetite suppressant can be made for just $5
Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk facing pressure as study finds $1,000 appetite suppressant can be made for just $5
A joint study between Yale University, King’s College Hospital in London and Doctors Without Borders found a single shot could be made for just 89 cents.
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1000$? It costs 80$ here. Insurance covers the 1mg injection completely. Drug prices on the US market are inflated as hell. Also it can be made for 5 bucks but the decades of research and billions poured into said research and testing is what raises the price.
Regardless corporate greed is corporate greed and big pharma is into some really shady stuff. Especially when we get to biologicals.
In a research driven company, research is a basic operational cost. These are all sunk cost paid for by other products. Before the product is introduced all of the research has been paid for.
So let's take a look at this companies financials.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVO/financials?guccounter=1
Their cost of goods was 36 billion. Out of 232 billion in sales or around a 85% margin.
It says they spent 32 billion dollars research.
They claimed a profit of 104 billion dollars after spending 2x the total research bill on sales/marketing and admin (62 billion) in other research driven industries this would be around 1/2 research budget.
They still made enough money to pay for more than 3 years of research.
In better regulated industry where greed didn't rule the day. They should be making less than 1/2 the gross income.
This is pure greed based upon people's suffering
Hey, that dude needed a third yacht. Who the hell do you think you are?
Uhg!
Is there more investment/interest/research due to those fat margins?
Nothing significant.
There comes point where tossing more money at at a research topic does nothing. Certain stages in development just take time. There are bottlenecks in the development process that limit the speed.
The thing that drives prices up is greed and marketing.
There is a good chunk of funding for medications that gets federal grant money.
It costs a 1000. Government programs make it 80. And that's good.
Our insurance system IS the government program. The government negotiates prices with the manufacturer. This is also the reason we have drug shortages. Cheaper drugs get re-exported legally by third parties to countries with higher prices. Abbvie straight up made a system where their new drugs would be delivered personally to the individual patient via a personal code to circumvent what happened to Humira.
Tresiba, Insulatard, Actrapid and a couple of other insulins, as well as antibiotics like Augmentin (which is in short supply to begin with) also suffered from re-export until the government issued a temporary ban.
The wholesale companies' response? Stockpile and wait for the ban to expire.
Yeah I'm aware. I'm just saying, someone is paying the bill