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Comment by thurn | Hacker News Reader

Are we close to having generic semaglutides e.g. available in India? Or locked into high prices for the foreseeable future?

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Generic Semaglutide is already produced on a massive scale throughout the world. However, it is unlawful to import and sell and will remain so until 2032 in the USA.

In other markets, where it is under patent, it is significantly cheaper than the $500/month or more in the US currently. For example in the UK it is roughly $150/month USD privately (i.e. not through the NHS).

In China it will be out of patent within two years.

There's a whole little online subculture of people in the US importing the precursors and making it themselves at home for dirt-cheap.

I gather it's extremely easy and basically fool-proof, as far as producing the desired drug and not producing some other, undesired drug. Much easier than, say, home-brewing beer. The risk is all in contamination, which presents a vector for infection.

[EDIT] I don't mean to downplay the risks or suggest people go do this, only to highlight that there's enough demand for this that we're well into "life, uh, finds a way" territory, and also just how lucky (assuming these hold up as no-brainers to take for a large proportion of the population) we are that these things are so incredibly cheap and simple to make, if you take the patents out of the picture.

Not just the current generation of drugs, but they also import and use the next generation that is still in clinical trials and won't be on the market for at least a year. I had it reccomended to me online in a very casual as if it were a supplement. The risk with the is not just contamination but also if you get side effects there's no recourse to sue because you bought it from a chemical factory in China. The new generation of glp peptides is similar to the old one, but still can have unintended side effects as they do work on three receptors rather than the two that the current generation does

It's not the precursors, it's the freeze dried powder form of the drug plus an excipient, generally mannitol.

You just reconstitute it with BAC water and inject it.

Iirc, that pricing will change in the US as Trump will require that the price of drugs to Medicaid patients must match or be less than that of any other developed nation.

Since about 1/4 of the people in the US are on medicaid, close to 90 million, that means the drug manufacturers will probably raise the price for everyone else in the US because they got to get their profits somehow...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-pr...

Unfortunately, per the link, it sounds like a voluntary arrangement. Essentially they're asking drug companies nicely to stop ripping off Americans.

If they're serious about this, they would introduce legislation rather than send strongly worded letters to pharma companies.

That would be pretty , unusual - Congress has shown an exceptionally strong bias to support medical industry profits over health Care through the decades.

I wonder if the bribery (campaign donations) has anything to do with it?

It has always been available

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