alt Hacker NewsSo millions of Americans should deal with years of obesity because Novo is a disaster, insurance coverage is ridiculous (any insurer accurately charging for the purpose of risk mitigation should be paying people to take GLP-1s, when instead they are out of coverage for most plans), and there exists no government body to do what you’ve said?
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estearum • today at 3:57 AM
What do you mean "there exists no government body to do what you've said?"
HHS could do it tomorrow.
While I'm sympathetic to this argument, I should point out patent time to expiration for medicine in the US is pretty inoffensive (relative to how bad it could be, like software patents), and we already have plenty of drugs for excreting excess. We get a big basket of drugs into public domain each year, and government would be wise to publicly celebrate this, I think; would help with the general sense of impending doom citizens feel.
Semaglutide molecule patent will expire in 2031 here (many caveats to this). For the most part, you can get any pill ~15+ years old for ~nothing without insurance, but associated devices like auto-injectors can extend this due to goofy rules; I expect execs thoughtfully considered medical patent law when deciding to initially trial and release GLP-1s as an injection.