alt Hacker News> but would be curious if anyone knows what's special about Ozempic delivery that can't be served by a commodity syringe.
They can't charge as much. That's basically it. Generic semaglutide from compounding pharmacies (which have their own issues for sure) is under $150 a month cash-pay these days.
The real issue with syringes and self administration is that the vast majority of the population are not comfortable with it and don't have the diligence to do it correctly every time, so you get under/over dosage or noncompliance.
That being said, the autoinjector format doesn't really solve that problem, it just slightly ameliorates it, in exchange for approximately 8x the cost.
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>Generic semaglutide from compounding pharmacies (which have their own issues for sure) is under $150 a month cash-pay these days.
...Is that supposed to be impressive? I assume you mean USD, so that works out to more than I pay for my food. Toronto isn't a cheap place to buy food, either.
So basically, 99.8% margin the maximum they can charge (at ~15-30cents/mo) or 99.5% margin at $1000/mo for a $2.5 injector? Semaglutide has been in production since 2012 and approved by the FDA since 2017. There's a real chance that specifically as a weight loss drug it's not patentable since it was in off label use before the patent was filed. That's being argued in the PTO now.