Pharmacies can only give out what people are prescribed, the only things they can push are OTC products. They can't get and sell scheduled drugs without being explicitly tracked.
But you're right about health care in the US. We need a single-payer system to get prices lower, but that means fairness and cutting out unnecessary costs. The whole health insurance industry would cease to exist, and all the people abusing it don't want that to happen.
I think they can - specifically, the pharmacies that mix drugs locally can mix and sell a drug that's declared in shortage. IIRC Ozempic was in that situation recently.
I looked it up, and I believe what you've heard about ended up just being people offering fake Ozempic.
> It's not like you can just buy semaglutide or the derivatives anywhere. It would have to come from the pharmaceutical company.
Pharmaceutical companies don't make those on their own either, they're contracting it off to drug manufacturing plants. The thing I read the other day said that compounding pharmacies order the same stuff from the same factories directly.
EDIT: found the article I read: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-compounding-loophole.
Another problem with OTC is that it leads to healthcare discrimination based on income and insurance quality since these are often not covered.
The US desperately needs to do away with for-profit health insurance and mega hospital corporations, severely limit the patenting and absurd profiteering in pharma, and replace Medicaid and Medicare with better single-payer, universal healthcare like the rest of the world does more cheaply and with better outcomes.
Take a look at the Fortune 500 and see how many top 20 are healthcare companies.
Then take a look at Global F500 and see how many of those are there.
They'll tank the US economy before they let for-profit healthcare die