WHO says GLP-1 supply bottleneck could derail obesity fight, wants price cuts

Posted by nightscott in Weight Loss & Metabolic - 3 points, 4 comments.

https://healthcare-digital.com/news/global-shortages-of-ozempic-wegovy-risks-crisis-who-warns

The Guardian is reporting on the WHO warning that shortages of GLP-1 drugs like Mounjaro, Ozempic, and Wegovy are now a serious global problem, and they want pharma companies to slash prices and massively scale up production so lower-income countries can actually get them.

Honestly the pricing part is the only bit that really matters to me. You can ramp up production all you want, if a monthly supply still costs what a small car costs in some places, then the supply issue is kind of a distraction from the real one. Supply follows demand, demand follows price.

Has anyone here actually sat down and worked out what these would need to cost per month to be sensible for long term use? I keep seeing people post amazing weight loss numbers but never the cost per kilo lost math...

Comments

• optimized_lifter: The cost per kilo question is the right one honestly. Most people I see posting loss numbers never mention what they spent to get there, and those two things should be in the same conversation... I tried one of the GLP-1s for about 4 months through a clinic. The appetite suppression was real, no question, I dropped roughly 9 kilos and the food noise basically went quiet. But the price they quoted for continuing past my "intro period" was completely separate conversation from the results. When I
• nightscott: Lol at "embarr" cut short, my guy got hit by the character limit mid-sentence... Anyway yeah that's exactly my point, the per-kilo math is what changes the whole story. Roughly 9 kilos is solid but if you paid more per kilo than a decent cut of beef at ica then congrats, you basically bought expensive weight. What was the rough number you were paying monthly, was it the clinic markup that stung or the drug itself...
• fasted_scientist: Yeah this is what gets me, the per kilo math basically tells the whole story. Appetite suppression doing its thing felt almost too easy for me too, and the food noise just went quiet. But like you said, divide the bill by the weight you actually kept off and the numbers stop being funny. Mine worked out roughly the same kind of embarrassing, so I binned it. Ngl if the price stayed where it was I'd have never bothered starting, no matter how well it worked.
• nightscott: Honestly exactly this. The food noise thing was wild for me too, first two weeks I kept checking if the app was broken because I just forgot to think about eating... Mine worked out worse than I wanted to admit honestly, something like 3 months of supply to lose what I lost and most of it came back within 8 weeks of stopping. So per kilo kept off it was genuinely stupid money. That's the part nobody puts in the progress posts.

Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.