If the food-industrial complex had not flooded the nation’s food supply with junk, if the government actively encouraged healthy lifestyles, and if efforts to address the obesity crisis didn’t rely solely on ‘miracle weight loss drugs’ pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, then maybe – just maybe – politicians wouldn’t be clamoring on Capitol Hill, or the elderly (somewhat senile) president in the White House, about out-of-control drug prices.
But since common sense has vanished in America and folks have given up on Peloton bikes for $1,000 monthly injections of “Wegovy,” the blockbuster weight loss treatment (also a diabetes drug called “Ozempic”) from Novo Nordisk, then socialists, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wouldn’t be reviving the discussion about high drug prices.
“Today, a new Yale study found that Ozempic costs less than $5 a month to manufacture. And yet, Novo Nordisk charges Americans nearly $1,000 a month for this drug, while the same exact product can be purchased for just $155 a month in Canada and just $59 in Germany,” Sanders said in a statement.
Sanders cited the study “Estimated Sustainable Cost-Based Prices for Diabetes Medicines,” conducted by researchers at Yale University, King’s College Hospital in London, and the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders. It was published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Wednesday.
In the study, researchers found Novo could produce the blockbuster drug for 89 cents to $4.73 per month, as opposed to the monthly retail price of about $1,349 for Wegovy, a semaglutide injection.
“As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), I am calling on Novo Nordisk to lower the list price of Ozempic — and the related drug Wegovy — in America to no more than what they charge for this drug in Canada,” Sander said.
He added: “The American people are sick and tired of paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs while the pharmaceutical industry enjoys huge profits.”
Sanders warned: “This outrageously high price has the potential to bankrupt Medicare, the American people and our entire health care system.
There is no rational reason, other than greed, for Novo Nordisk to charge Americans nearly $1,000 a month for Ozempic when it costs less than $5 to manufacture it and can be purchased in Germany for just $59. Novo must substantially reduce the price of Ozempic in the US now. pic.twitter.com/rdyF5MCQbX
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 27, 2024
Analysts have forecasted that the market for weight-loss drugs could reach at least $100 billion a year by the end of the decade, with the production of Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro. And a decent chunk of the weight loss drugs will likely be covered by Medicare.
“The profit margin is immense” on weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Melissa Barber, a public health economist at Yale and the study’s lead author, told Bloomberg. She added, “There should be a conversation in policy about what is a fair price.”
Rounding back to the intro of this note, Americans should eat better and exercise. Then, we don’t have to rely on the pharmaceutical-industrial complex. What’s odd is the government does not promote ‘common sense’ healthy lifestyles. Why is that? Are their donors pharma companies?
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How about we just let fat unhealthy people die the death they deserve? Everyone will eventually die, why bankrupt the country to keep people alive for a short time? My wife and I already have our medical powers set out, with no DNR. Medicine can now keep us alive on machines for years, but is that really life? For myself at least, I believe in quality of life, and not bankrupting my family for a few more weeks or months.
There’s a reason the guys at noagendashow.net call Zepbound “Deathbound”🤣 Anesthesiologists hate the drug because it slows down digestion so much they’ve had patients who have been off of it for 2 weeks still have food in their stomachs.🤢
Ozempic and Wegovy, for example, two weight loss drugs that are all the rage despite costing well over $1,000 per month, must be taken for life…
The problem with lifelong use of these drugs is that their side effects can be life threatening. As reported by CNN in December 2023
Here’s the story of one patient who says Ozempic made her life a living hell:
It’s made from Gila monster toxins. They mostly eat only once every couple weeks.
Remember Olestra the fake fat to keep peoples weight down from snack food? Side effect was anal leakage. Wondering why that didn’t go over better?
It strikes me that the only way we might achieve a situation where people have to be responsible for their own health is for a “Medicare For All” approach to take hold. Everyone would get “free” healthcare, but it would be shitty and bare bones. I don’t know whether it would be better or worse overall than the clusterfuck we have now.
I have said the same, even though I am opposed to it ideologically, there’s no way to put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. The incentives are so screwed up, and the “cost” feedback is gone. The punishments accrue heavily to those who work and buy regular insurance in order to cover ER/injury and catastrophic possibilities. Put everyone on “Medicaid” including all govt workers and elected officials. No two-tiered system, but it only covered hospitalizations and Emergency stabilization. All employed individuals are already paying for it plus their elective plan. Go back to cash or concierge arrangements for primary care, elective care, and people can decide if it’s worth it for what they get…
The American system is the worst of both systems with none of the benefits.
How about free witch doctors to keep costs down?
For Americans to eat healthily, or healthfully (not “eat healthy”), we’d have to return to apprenticeships for youth and have half a million of them trained as farmers. Then, we’d need to shutter operations such as Monsanto, big pHARMa, etc. It’d take some doing to clean up the mess we’ve made. We would also, yes, need to erase moral hazard, such as .gov subsidy of, well . . . of anything.
This has become the United States of Peter Pan, where childhood has been wrecked and adulthood outlawed and derided as unnecessary. We would also need to return to things that, until very recently, were accepted widely and expected:
Speaking of…my son did 4h chickens last year for the first time. We bought “show” feed for the first time. Didn’t realize until we were about halfway through but all of that has Amprolium in it. Started looking more into that, looks like it’s in a LOT of farmed species’ feed. Could not find anything solid on research as to the effects on humans eating animals raised with this. Seems like it could affect bioavailable B vitamin in the meat?
Chickens main diet should be bugs and anything else they can scratch out of the ground. That is why a free range chicken costs $4 dollars a pound, it takes them time to grow, unlike force feed cage chickens which are ready in a few months.
Joel Salatin has said this before – that a lot more people would have to take up farming to provide sustainability and nutritious food. Regenerative agriculture is not scalable like toxic agribusiness is.
Meanwhile McDonalds is going to start selling Krispy Creme Donuts in their restaurants.
One of my clients is a physician and we were having a beer looking over his house I was remodeling. He laughed and said he makes a fortune from fat people. He said 90% of his time is dealing with his patients issues that stem from being obese. I guess that’s how he bought his 2 million dollar beach house.
Another doctor I worked for an older retired chief medical officer told me the way to live a long life is to avoid doctors and pharmaceutical medications .
This is getting old.
I feel the same way I did when I was teaching my kids the times tables. It is frustrating to keep repeating the same thing over and over when it’s so simple to understand and to have people still wondering what the hell you’re talking about.
You are being poisoned to the degree that you medicate the symptoms of the poisoning, but live long enough to continue poisoning yourself and the entire time you pay for it out of your own pocket and at the expense of your own health.
Nail on the head HF
Yep. In addition I hold the health and foodie people partially responsible for the Covid mind control. This includes natural, or alternative, health people too- many of whom warned about the scam but were part of this movement originally.
Many people’s hobby was/is ‘health and wellness’.
B4 the plandemic if these people talked to me I would say, after you cut down on sugar and carbs and exercise get back to me on that.
The Day Tapes (1980s) talked about this being part of the plan.
When the culture lionizes morbid obesity it will get more and more of it. Just look at Lardo (aka lizzo) on stage with the three stooges at Radio City last night………supersize those fries for ya’
Stranded whale. Leave it in there.
Whoa…is that an actual “Ghettopotamus” in the wild…impressive corpulence.
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Where is self accountability?
Not my job to police others and what they brainlessly, perpetually stuff in any orifice.
Your body, your choice. MY body, MY choice.
BTW=they already declared desiring to ‘eat healthy’ is a mental illness.
rofl
Very good comment. Thanks!
The actual cost of weight loss is… wait, is this correct? Yes. The cost is less than zero. Quit being a fat, gluttonous, sloth. Eat healthy and move around more than you do.
And don’t tell me I don’t know what I am talking about, because you don’t know a single thing about me.
I think “eating healthy” is just enough to barely hang onto your health, these days. If you are already metabolically compromised by not eating healthy (most of the available food supply is not healthy), then it will take extraordinary measures to correct that.
WTF? Blue & green Lemons used to be 4 for $1 on the street.
pay no attention to the massive agricultural industrial complex subsidies. welfare is for the to big to fail contingent.
Just another drug with a shit load of side effects. Sure someone takes it a few months and drops a shit ton of weight. Once they get off it, they will continue doing the same ole and gain it all back, back to the same fat ass they were before. For decades I have always went through weight swings that go by the season. I gain a bit in the winter as I am more sedentary. By spring when the gardening, fire wood, maple syrup, and endless other chores kick in…it drops like a rock. I always follow a basic and healthy diet. It isn’t friggen rocket science!!
Most people don’t need any drugs, they just need to eat better food and stop poisoning themselves.
So, if your food doesn’t digest for two weeks from these drugs it means you can sit on the couch for two weeks, eating Cheetos and not have to get up that whole time to take a dump (pee in a cup). What can go wrong?
If Congress left the farmers alone and quit whoring after Big Agra money with all it’s poisonous practices and unhealthy additives we wouldn’t be having that conversation…now would we.
If Congress ceased to exist, because people stopped believing it represented us . . .