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Comment by bognition | Hacker News Reader

My conclusions were not about how to do drug pricing in general. Rather about how we could justify a lower price for this specific drug.

The success of Ozempic is exceptional Without a doubt, And I’m arguing that because of this exceptional success, the company can afford to dramatically lower price

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You can't realistically discuss "how to do drug pricing in general" without taking into account the dynamic where companies recoup their research costs on a tiny number of hit drugs. It doesn't work if those hit drugs only make a small margin.

You're over thinking it.

Americans are just fatter.

That's true, but I'm honestly not sure what you think that has to do with this.

Is your theory that demand is higher in the US and that's why the prices are higher?

I don't see any reason to think that would be the case for a product that is very easy to transport globally. That is, absent other effects, like regulation and the differences between how insurance works in different places, I think this would be a global market with prices driven by global demand.

(As a though experiment) The problem would be how to combine shareholder capitalism with post hoc lowering of prices. Why should the shareholders Novo accept less returns on their bet, in order to give Americans a better price than 'the US' with all it's market power (or lack thereof considering their institutional arrangements) can bargain for? My opinion: The US could obviously change their institutional arrangements and get lower prices for patients (plus the shortages that go along with low prices), but this change would face stiff opposition in Congress from those gaining from the current status quo. You get what you pay for. Massive prices, and all the preferential treatment of suppliers and those involved in the supply chains that money can buy.

Because we live in a society. Other countries don’t pay nearly as much for it. Is it the duty of the US to subsidize those countries? Why are they paying less than us? It’s the US society that lets the corporation exist here, so why shouldn’t we leverage that against their interest. No one is calling for them to give it away free, but why should they get away with what is essentially usury? We aren’t really in a “free market”, lots of things have price controls especially those things which a necessary for life. In particular this could save tens (hundreds?)of thousands of lives a year, so when is enough $$ enough for stockholders? Who is really in charge here?

It isn't the duty of the US to subsidize them, but many of us think it is nonetheless worth the bargain in order to incentivize research into novel medicines.

I personally don't think this is the only way we could accomplish this, but I think it's a better outcome than it would be if nobody nation "over"-paid for medicine in order to subsidize research.

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