Novo and Lilly already sell direct to the consumer! Yes, you need a prescription, but once you have one you can buy straight from the manufacturer.
It's one or the other. You can have your ''patents'' and ''intellectual property'' respected...but that requires you not charge an outrageously higher price in certain markets, like the US.
The solution is a law preventing drug firms from pricing in the US higher than (some small multiple of) what it charges anyone else in the world.
That would require those same companies from not abusing our political process to obtain illegal political outcomes - outcomes that are unconstitutional - like Citizens United, which led to PHrMA dumping unimaginable money into bad faith political advertising/lobbying.
Until or unless they stop being bad actors, everyone should pirate their stuff. Free Luigi.
If you actually know what it was then answer how does limiting non-electioneering advertisements from PACs for 30 days out of the year changes anything?
The best public policy outcome in such an approach would be for losses to be only slightly negative. Positive or zero expected losses mean no drug development, and highly negative expected losses mean the drug is more expensive than necessary and reduces the accessibility of the drug.
However, current patent law allows companies to minimise their expected loss, with no controls to prevent highly negative expected losses.
There are alternative models - such as state funding of drug development. This model has benefit that it is possible to optimise more directly for measures like QALY Saved (Quality Adjusted Life Years Saved) - which drug sale revenue is an imperfect proxy for due to some diseases being more prevalent amongst affluent people, and because one-time cures can be high QALY Saved but lower revenue.
The complexity of state funding is it still has the free-rider problem at a international level (some states invest less per capita in funding). This is a problem which can be solved to an extent with treaties, and which doesn't need to be solved perfectly to do a lot of good.
The rest of the world isn't free riding - the USA has just setup a market where there is very little bargaining power for consumers because of how the US medical market and insurance works.
Novo and Eli are still making plenty of money in Europe where these drugs cost a fraction of the price, and where there aren't other significant suppliers for GLP-1's like is being implied.
If you and me both buy the same car, but i'm better at negotiating than you and get a lower price, I'm not free riding because you 'funded the design of the car with the extra money you paid', you are just bad at negotiation.
When we all negotiate lower prices, we get fewer new drugs. Maybe that's better than the status quo (for Americans). Maybe it isn't.
FDA is constrained by Congress here. Its function (safety and efficacy in advance of marketing) is required by legislation dating to the 60s. Feel free to advocate for Congress to change the law, but it isn't obvious it would be popular with Americans.
> insanely restrictive requirements on what requires a doctor prescription.
I don't think OTC vs Rx rules have much if any impact on drug development expenses.
In this case, Novo developed the drug. In your view, why does Hims get credit for "the greatest good to public health in a century" and not the company that sank over $10B into developing Ozempic?
Of course, Novo faces competition from Lilly and every other pharma company in the world and continues to lower prices in the face of this competition.
I fully expect the state to take action against the, to me, very obvious will of the people who are actively seeking out and purchasing these products. Clearly folks don't respect the legitimacy of IP rights in the same way they respect property rights since nobody blinks when buying compounded GLP but at the same time wouldn't shoplift at their local BestBuy.
So yeah the government's response isn't surprising but you won't see me cheering them on, and I don't think you should either. You literally stand to lose from it.