> Why would the price come down before they can supply current demand?

Because in exchange they could unlock a bulk order from e.g. the U.S. government. That in turn could unlock economies of scale that let them price competitors out of the market.

They are literally buying up as many factories as they are allowed to do. Money is not the issue - getting access to production lines is.

> Money is not the issue - getting access to production lines is

You don’t think having the heft of the U.S. government behind one of those parties will help with that access?

What I'm trying to say is that the supply is constrained, not the demand. And the supply of factories themselves are constrained as well. So they need to build more factories, which they are doing at an impressive pace. And for building factories it's similarly not the land or the money or the red tape that's the issue. It's the time to build a factory that's the limiting factor.

I interviewed for a contractor involved in building factories for Novo Nordisk. The timelines sounded insanely ambitious.

> Do you see the US government wanting to disrupt these industries, many of which are political donors?

When the one being disrupted is a European pharma? Yes.

The article is about disrupting big tobacco, candy companies, etc. being disrupted by a European pharma. Why would the US gov’t make a massive order to bring down costs to disrupt homegrown companies?

> Why would the US gov’t make a massive order to bring down costs to disrupt homegrown companies?

Have you been around our lawmaking institutions, or lawmakers? The idea that we'd sandbag something like Ozempic, which by the way is being negotiated for mass deployment through Medicare [1], to save the likes of Frito-Lay is nuts. Even if we reduce American politics to the lobbyist-conspiracy model, which isn't terribly predictive but whatever, you're pitting big pharma against chips and fast food.

[1] https://qz.com/wegovy-ozempic-weight-loss-drugs-medicare-rul...

Isn't the US Gov'mnt required to buy prescription drugs at market value? One of the Medicare Prescription Drug Expansions from the GW Bush era.

They're not buying generics, and even at a 20% discount will get hosed compared to the $7 generics

Don't they have a patent which makes competition non-existent for the near future?

There are numerous compounding pharmacies selling generic ozempic (Semaglutide)

There is competition, I see ads on Facebook and Instagram for it all the time, there are clinics all over where I live advertising Semaglutide treatment for weight loss.

Additionally, "Ozempic" (semaglutide) has become the blanket word to describe an entire class of drugs (GLP-1 Agonists) that all kind of do the same thing. Some of which have already been proven in clinical trials to be even more effective than Ozempic (ex. Tirzepatide)

It's like when COVID hit and somehow "Zoom" became the shorthand for online video meetings even though there were (and still are) a ton of options for that functionality on the market.

There are multiple formulations, e.g. Ozempic vs Wegovy.

Both Ozempic and Wegovy are manufactured by Novo Nordisk. That’s not competition. It is market segmentation as they are marketed for different uses.

Oh, didn’t know that. Doesn’t Eli Lilly have a competitor?

They do. It's called Mounjaro.

Ozempic is for diabetics, wegovy is for weight loss

The govt has already subsidized production through investing in research they've leveraged.

I mean sort of, maybe. It's a danish company, that's already the largest contributor to research, also from a grant perspective. The Novo Nordisk Foundation is supplying research grants at like 5 times of the size of the danish government. And that's without taking into account the grants and research done by Novo Nordisk, the company itself.

> price competitors out of the market

Are there competitors or are they under patent protection?

Are you suggesting they shouldn’t manufacture more?

No, they certainly should, and according to them they are trying to. There is currently an unknown level of demand at the current price point, all we know is that it is probably far more than current supply. There's every reason to believe that they will increase production as fast as possible and still only meet demand over a year from now.

Once demand is met, there starts to be an argument for lowering the price and growing the market. Getting the price down to half the current price is when we start to see health benefits that outweigh the cost of treatment and an obvious win for insurance companies to start covering it for everyone.

But until there is supply, lowering cost just means more people fighting over the same supply, not more people getting access.