I wonder what cultural phobia we have that prevents us from doing anything about it... Nahhhhh the freemarket will find the solution, I'm sure it's profitable.
You know it would awesome if someone from the inside could... you know... gather some documents showing just how insanely ludicrous the industry's practices are and... you know... give them to a reputable journalist?
it broken an we all know it but what interesting is could cripple the inter system as it is now both public and privet bring the house down and forcing reform
@@Earthboundmike again, it's not broken. Our healthcare system was designed to extract profit from the masses, and it does that quite well, at least in the short term.
I have to correct one bit, pharma companies do not spend money on their own R&D. Their "R&D" is actually just their marketing. Public money covers nearly all R&D which happens at publicly funded universities. Well, they do, do R&D on drugs they own only to extend their patents. The Fed gov should nationalize all the pharma companies.
Was coming on here just to point that out. Guess you beat me to it. But yeah, the US taxpayer fronts the money to research the drug, then big pharma swoops in and takes the patent before charging us a second time.
This is not true. Pfizer paid over 11 billion in 2022 for R&D. My sister actually just got laid off from Pfizer because the company wants to get away from R&D due to the costs and risks.
decades ago I worked for a market research firm in their "medical division". We called doctors on be half of prescription drug companies (who kept their identities hidden to the participants but we knew who sponsored it) and paid the doctors hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars for their participation. The companies wanted to know how to better market their drugs even if they KNEW their drug was inferior. They were more interested in being able to sell it even if they knew there was a better drug on the market to treat the patient. They wanted to know things like what colors and packaging would be more attractive. They had no interest in the patient's well-being. Only their own financial gain.
My mom was on it, she lost a huge amount of weight and managed to keep it off. She was perscribed it for prediabetic conditions to keep her from going over the edge. Worked quite well and she is in much better health now. She was only on it for about 3-4 months last year.
[edited, was misunderstood] Sure, we could be sarcastic and dismissive about it, but I think we can do something about this. on the one hand yeah, of course the rich try this and maybe that's normal or whatever, but on the other, what do we do about it? like how do you or I found a better managed company to make some of the money eli lily is? sounds intractable in this environment to me. eli lily has captured that market in a way that doesn't permit viable competition, we can't just go found such a company - what are we going to do, research and develop a competing product? for an effect that precise? and then prove it works, to federal standards? very few companies employ the researchers necessary, and those researchers don't get funded for free; the management system of who funds them for what instructions is a mess, and no historical management scheme has been dramatically better (edit: so we need to make a better one in the shell of the old - but it has to be better for the first time, past attempts to use theory to make better economic systems haven't gone perfectly); there have always been severe human rights violations when some internal authority in whatever system becomes corrupt. It's the well-trained researchers doing it, but the funding structure around deciding what instructions their employer/funder from their institution gives them is in these organizations, organizations whose internal conversations have lots of detail around how to constrain their customers to be trapped on the drug, and lots of discussion about how to steal from the few tax dollars you were paying to help others.
@@laurenpinschannels I love how your argument is basically, "Who cares if the system is shitty? I'm used to this shitty system and any system you come up with will eventually turn shitty, too." I'm going to stick to not purchasing chemicals from the companies "solving" the problems they created in the first place by dumping forever chemicals in our water and wrapping all of our food in plastic. It's only a matter of time before we find out how dangerous this drug actually is. Besides, if all of the options truly are shitty as you say, then I'm going with the one that costs me the least.
In December of 2019, nearly every US airline company reported near record profits in the billions of dollars. In April of 2020, just 4 months later, they were crying they needed a bailout. In less than 4 months the company somehow did not have the billions in profits they claimed they had and needed taxpayers to bail them out, so where did their billions in profits go?
@@Thehappybirder luckily i got fired from my job in August of 2020 because a Mexican and a Black guy made fake accusations against me and two other white guys and 2 of us got fired and 1 got demoted from a boss to a mechanic. I have been avoiding society since.
Welcome to America. The worst part is that america was great when doctors gave their paten for free and that people wanting to make America great againt would piss on these people...
Unfortunately the constitution only protects against cruel and unusual _punishment_ - not cruel and unusual _treatment._ Either suffer or move to Poland where it is so much better.
So true. I don't know how many times I've been in a blind panic because I couldn't afford my epilepsy meds or couldn't get an appointment with my doctor to get them or something went wrong at the pharmacy, etc, etc. It's terrifying to have a life threatening disorder and not know if you'll be able to get care.
@@PraiseTheFSMonster On the flipside, sometimes you can afford epilepsy meds, you even can get appointment to get them prescribed, but there are no meds in the pharmacies, except for that single one that's on the other side of the city you live in.
I witnessed the whole thesis of this video personally when I was doing my Master’s in Public Health in Sweden in 2014-2016. I was a public health student at Lund University in Sweden in 2015 when Novo Nordisk came to our Health Economics class to discuss their work. They mentioned Ozempic and how they found that it also is a weight loss drug. They told us that they would sell it in Europe as a diabetes drug because of the laws in the EU, however I’m the US, they would market it as a weight loss drug and charge $84k a year (remember, this was 2015, they were still figuring it out). I raised my hand, as an American, and said to them “so, what you’re saying is that you’re going to make it so expensive that insurance isn’t going to cover it, even though the people who need it the most are poor people, since diabetes and obesity disproportionately effect these populations?” And their response was “yeah, basically.” I’m being specific about the classes and university because this can be fact checked.
All this, to eat carbs, freely. Gee, if only there was something, someone could do, that was almost literally, free, that could fix this. Hmm. Don't eat carbs, and walk. Omg people, wake up.
Well...here in the USA, many poor fat people are on disability now and because they've never worked at anything in life except eating, they get Medicaid which pays for everything. No premiums, no co-pays, there's no such thing as drug tiers for them. Meanwhile, those of us who have spent our lives working/earning money, have to pay a premium for Medicare, co-pays on doctor visits, surgeries and prescriptions. Yes we have a tier, many non-generic drugs aren't covered at all, even when there isn't an equivalent. Good luck getting an approval through appeal with physician backing. The office drones at Medicare and private insurance decide whether drugs and procedures are paid for, not anyone with an actual medical degree. Insurance premiums are ridiculously high, due in large part to somebody having to pay to subsidize the "poor". These "poor" get free health, dental and vision care, get any free food with no restrictions up to $600 month, section 8 housing many times for $100 rent that includes ALL utilities including cable TV and internet because those are "necessities" now. Lest I forget, they also get free cell service. The Medicare I pay for AND supplement only pays for 2 dental cleanings yearly and about 25% on crown/filling. Too bad it doesn't cover dentures because teeth are cosmetic, not necessary to live..according to Medicare....unless you're on Medicaid then they're a necessity and covered 🤬
@@MrGamman3ytit enrages me that being obese is a disabling condition now. Any illness that can be cured is not a disease! For most, type 2 diabetes is cured by putting down the cake, getting off the chair and walking around daily. Ask anybody with an incurable disease what they'd do or give up to be cured. I wish it was as easy as diet and exercise
@@tracyjohnson5023it’s possible to complain about the US healthcare system without demonizing the poor. The people living on welfare and Medicaid are not your enemy - it’s the billionaires who exploit labor and buy off government to extract maximum wealth out of the American people, regardless of the human cost. Part of what makes this possible is keeping the middle class angry at the poor for “freeloading” - while the rich pay a lower tax rate, and amass larger and larger piles of money… In other words they keep us fighting over the crumbs while they make off with the whole cake.
I don't like government using coercion, but I demand that it engage in good faith negotiation. What our government has done is shirk its responsibility and let Big Pharma dictate what it will extract from US citizens. To maximize profits over the health of people.
EVERYTHING is America is price-gouged. My kid is in Japan right now. The food is not only infinitely better in quality in Japan, the prices are jaw-droppingly cheap. She's loving her waffles and coffee from the Japanese version of 7/11 for $2.65. (IHOP in my hood is advertising pancakes with coffee $7.99 an its garbage) Sushi that would be $100 here...$12.00. Americans are gouged for drugs, food, housing, transportation and we still think of ourselves as "free". We are completely ignorant slaves to "shareholder value" and a government owned and operated by the share-holders aka CEOs.
Japan is the last civilized functioning society in the world. I hope they keep their borders closed. As soon as they open their borders, they will lose it all.
This view is rather opposed to reality in my opinion. You're comparing the cost of basic goods to Japan, one of the few countries along with SK that is even more of a hyper-capitalist dystopia than the US is. If you compared the US to well-regulated places like in Europe, where the government isn't run by CEOs, the prices of those basic goods are actually much higher, especially when you take the lower salaries into account.
@@alpacagurl92 Ok but they still prove that it's possible to feed everyone high quality food for cheap. Japan has issues but their food isn't one of them.
I worked at Gilead for the better part of a decade. As soon as we had a marketable drug and became profitable, the company changed dramatically. Maximum pricing strategies were just the tip of the iceberg. But there’s no pharmaceutical company with clean hands. And by the way, the claim that they spend “billions” on research? That’s an exaggeration. Much of the basic research comes from government-funded research grants and university work, not big pharma. Hundreds of millions? Yes. Billions on one drug? No.
Why do you hate on Big Pharma like that? When they say they spent billions on research they are being truthful. It's just that the research involved how they could give billions in bonuses and salary for the C Suite members and what they could write off on their tax bill. Stop being so negative on those doing God's Work...😏
I'm glad u decided that working for a drug company that cares not about its users but about $$ was not for you. We can always make a dollar but you've heard the saying about a bridge builder.
@@jasonchristopher2977 , At the risk of sounding even more ignorant than I already do, I don’t know the saying about the bridge builder…please explain.
Something got glossed over in this doc, and I think it's extremely important. Since the virality of these drugs for weight loss, the availability of all of the injectables in this category has plummeted. This is a challenge for diabetics who need the drug because they are struggling to control their BS on traditional insulin products. I have several type 1 and type 2 diabetic friends who were originally put on Ozempic, only for their local pharmacies to dry up. You stress that if you stop using the drug, your weight will return. For diabetics, it also means that you have to switch to a drug with a different modality, which may not be an option for some. It's sad that this point isn't in the forefront of the news about the situation; it's similar to the adderall shortage happening right now, because people with legit prescriptions are now competing with those who faked their way to getting it, or those who are just turning around and selling what they get.
How do you know people are "faking" their way into adderal Rx? Seems like that would be on the drug company for not producing enough to raise prices and CLAIMING people are faking their symptoms en masse to hide their artificial price gouge
The real problem for me: I have Diabetes II and this drug was saving my life. I cannot find it now because of people using it for weight control. I need it to live. I need it to not go blind. I need it to not have a limb amputated.
@@benishborogove2692 its not your body doesnt make enough insulin, its you eat WAY too much. this is why lots type2 diabetes when they stop eating much, they are CURED.
@@vlmhma.7414 Berberine may have great promise but like some popular COVID remedies, suffers a severe lack of quality research. There is a statistical method called meta-analysis that bundles together a bunch of small studies. This is not the same level of proof as a large, multi-center trial. The papers I have read all are careful to point out this limitation. They use words like "*may* have *similar*" actions as some pharmaceuticals.
@@chrisE815 Your health care is marked up by 1000% because hospitals are required to treat uninsured emergencies and expect insurance companies to negotiate down the price. With a single-payer system the government negotiates the price periodically. Hospitals and doctor's offices then have a predictable revenue stream.
I’m diabetic and live in Australia and get 1mg pen for $60 each month (works amazing for stabilizing my blood sugar btw). American’s should be way more angry about how price gouged they get.
I promise we are angry. My sister died of poverty in Florida. Her routine healthcare was done in an RV in a parking lot. She had to be there by 6 a.m. and bring a lawnchair. She worked herself to death providing for her family cleaning other people's homes.
@@TD052 I believe healthcare there is a government service. ...The reason Medicare doesn't cover everything? To deliberately create a market for Medicare advantage plans- which are for-profit insurance. 🤬
This is why medical research has no business being a private sector thing. How much does the drug cost to manufactuer. Okay, make a law stating that they can have a 50% markup on the cost of manufacturing. If they're not okay with that, look at their RnD costs for it, how much did it cost to make? Okay we'll give you three times your investment, you're done making money off it now. The idea that you can pay people to learn and experiment and then use knowledge against the working class is insane.
@@publicguy1664 this is not true. My sister, a biochemist, recently got laid off from Pfizer because they wanted to get out of the R&D due to the costs and risks of it. Drug companies pay a lot into R&D and sometimes drugs fail leading to them having to increase the prices of other drugs to cover the losses.
I lost 140 lbs on Manjuro! For someone who was 436lbs this year was a miracle for me personally! I changed my eating and began to workout! I am now 295! I am on Wegovy now since my insurance was not going to cover it unless I was type 2 diabetic! Wegovy has been slower but it is beginning to work now!
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The fact that prices are so high for insurance and medication along with the fact that Medicare can't negotiate on all drugs makes Americans look at the numbers and think we can't do M4A. But the reality is if the US just kept stakes in the drugs the government funded the research for and we cornered the market by having everyone in the same insurance pool through M4A which could negotiate prices we would all have coverage at a fraction of current costs. But that's not going to make a few people insanely rich so we choose having more billionaires instead.
The American Health Care model is simple... Your money, or your life. Which one do you want to keep? If you are wealthy, you get to keep both. If you are poor (or even middle class), you have to choose.
People need to take some responsibility for their health and stop thinking that a doctors gonna do that for you or a drug or a hospital or somebody else it’s your health not all those other peoples health. It’s your responsibility to figure out how to keep yourself healthy.
@@mattm1686 I have agree with you on that score though I do not think everything is preventable but a lot of it yes. The problems is too many people delegate their brains and problem solving skills to paid-off "experts"
Stop eating carbs, and walk. I've reduced carbs 10 years ago, to maybe half, like 80 per day. Now down to 25 or so. Why have the greatest bullet proof vest, just not purchase bullets? Problem solved. Oh, and walk.
Thanks. This is what unfettered capitalism does. This is its purpose. This is its function. Anyone clutching their pearls over this sort of abuse must either shut up, or admit that Laissez-faire capitalism is a disaster. I get so tired of people holding up examples like this without ever acknowledging that our economic system is the real problem. Corporations own the government to the point that it's unlikely we'll ever change this without revolution. And it's spreading globally. tavi.
@@VernCrisler I only know that what we have doesn't work. And I'm pretty sure our system and "commies" are not the only two choices. Only people who eat, drink, and poop dogma think that. We can come up with something better. tavi.
Except this is not Laissez faire capitalism... under a free market patents would not be a thing, so there's no reason someone else couldn't make the drug and undercut them. The biggest issue is that they didn't do the research for the drug. Universities did. They just filed the patent and funded the studies. Make it illegal to patent anything that involves published research, and you would eliminate most of these issues
@@markmacgallager2670 I think I can agree with you. In actuality, the gila monster owns the original patent for GLP-1 drugs. I'm not sure exactly what is patented with these drugs -- the drug itself or the means of delivery. Some of the compounding pharmacies are adding B vitamins to the GLP--1 / GIP activators, perhaps to escape patent restrictions?
The problem starts when they decided they’re worth more than someone else. If the people at Killy honestly believed they were inherently equal to the rest of us, they wouldn’t be so willing to sew seeds of suffering and destruction to fill their pockets with such disgusting greed.
They need a quick replacement for opioids, what is insane is that people still believe in pharma fairy tales, that perilous journey never goes well in the end.
Maximizing revenue regardless of human consequences - the root of most evil in the world. We really need a model of economy that legally enforces not going too far in this matter. Financial sustainability (including planned expansions and RnD) is good enough. There's no need to take more.
Feels like this "having the government negotiate prices with the private sector" also relates to the housing market. When you look at successful long term housing policies Vienna does this well by having a large enough supply of public housing that the private sector has to compete with the public (not for profit) housing market. Here in the US our government has exacts no power or leverage in setting or negotiating prices so insurance, pharmaceutical, and real estate companies can get away with price fixing to maximize profit at any cost.
one of the thing drive up the cost of rantels is there being treaded like stocks. some cities have up to 30% of there rantel properties vancanet becouse filling the, would lower the demanted and there for property value
everything that the government gets involved in ends up leading to a worse outcome for citizens and consumers, look at skyrocketing home and rent prices, college tuition, the PPP loans that reduced the value of the dollar and super charged inflation.
My friend works for Novartis which invests by far the highest of any company into r&d and I think they're around 2% of their overall budget. Most pharmaceutical companies are at less than half a percent of their overall budget. Many are at like .2%. The r&d explanation is pure nonsense
The whole pharma system relies on the politicians backing them. Get the donations (bribes) from corporations to politicians outlawed. I know haha haha, yeah right. Then vote in the non corporate backed politicians in order to see change.
I find it pathetic that people take this instead of living a healthy lifestyle. Should be if you absolutely need it. Not a cheat code because people are weak
Why should the Taxpayers foot the bill for people who got themselves obese? Local places offer no cost nutritional classes, learn to cook and stop eating out...
It would probably cost you an extra $1,000 per month for a proper healthy diet, that is "if" you had the willpower to maintain it. On the other hand, to be completely dependent (addicted) to a very expensive drug in order to stay thin while eating unhealthy foods is kind of ridiculous. It reminds me of my sister who eats ice cream and then takes an extra dose of insulin, ridiculous.
I was lucky enough to get my Maunjaro prescription approved by my insurance company. I lost about eleven or twelve percent of my body weight in the first month and then leveled off. But that's not why I take it. After a septic infection a couple of years ago, I ended up with type 2 diabetes and some kidney disease. Maunjauro treats the first perfectly and may help with the second. My blood sugar was stabilized at a normal level within the first week. It remains to be seen if the benefits disappear immediately if I stop taking it no matter what though. I hold out hope, that by stabilizing the hormone functions that control blood sugar my own pancreas can be retrained to respond in a normal fashion after a more lengthy period of using the drug. I'll have to keep my eye out for any new studies that examine this possibility in the years to come. Assuming the drug continues to be covered by my insurance.
+ This drug has also been really helpful for my mom’s diabetes. The shortages created by the off-label usage for weight loss is a hardship on anyone who uses it as indicated for T2DM.
Walking, eating high protein diet, and doing body weight exercises would make it so you don’t have to pay a drug company to force your body to do what it would do naturally. Just saying.
Out of curiosity was it Covid that kicked in your diabetes? Because it was for me. I’m interested in finding out if anyone else has this side effect from the steroids they gave patients to combat Covid 19
My Doc has tried putting me on a few of these boutique diabetes drugs. Every time I call my insurance plan to check the cost, and it comes in at $400 or more per month, I simply turn it down. I need it, but I'm not making a new car payment per month for milligrams of a drug with no end in site. We are the dumbest country in the world when it comes to healthcare.
It can be a good investment for a particular kind of patient: the ones that know that in theory they can lose weight, but fall off the wagon before they make it over the hump. Weight loss isn't complicated, but it's still hard, and a lot of people lack the willpower to see it through, especially when sugaring up is such an easy fix to feeling bad. But once people made it back to a weight where an active, healthy lifestyle is possible, they might be able to maintain it. Because it isn't true that once you stop with the drug you will gain the weight back. That only happens if you eat it all back on. It doesn't just magically fly back to you. What is needed is a holistic approach to weight loss therapy: get the drug, consult a nutritionist to help with a possible lack of education around food, and provide a psychological intervention to see if there is actually an addiction problem underneath all that flab. Done like that, it can actually be a good thing for patient and insurance alike.
Weight loss is only one aspect. Diabetes is the other. Its actually cost effective in the long run for lessening the long term compounded health problems that result from diabetes being unmanaged, or even only partially managed.
Some people in the comments are mad about people using this drug as an "easy way out", but they're too simple-minded to understand the consequences that this standard is setting. If you're willing to allow them to get away with abusing the system when it comes to weight loss medicines, then you're setting us up to lose the battle once there is a medication to manage/cure things like ALS, cancer, autoimmune disease, etc.
It isn't a healthcare system. When I went to the hospital to find a doc and get set up they handed me a book of papers for me to fill out. I tossed it back on the desk and told them I'd rather just die. I even have insurance. I just can't use it without writing a book. From what the nurses were saying everything they do is geared toward getting people to go through the emergncy room so they can charge way more money. This industry should be socialized.
Can you explain what you had to fill out that was so expansive? And all the years I've had various insurances I've never had to fill out a book level of forms.
I was actually on the side of the pharmaceutical company until they said the US Government doesn’t have the power to negotiate prices. That’s just completely insane.
And it's just not true. Of course they have that power. All it would need for them is to say: no, we won't have insurances pay for that drug. It's the simplest thing. They WANT to be powerless.
The fact the most powerful government in the world won't let itself negotiate prices on drugs it's paying for is mind boggling until you remember abuch of politicians and government officials are on the payroll in an almost certainly under the table kind of way
You cannot improve the long-term quality of your health through drug-based weight loss without adjusting the foods you eat, beverages you drink and activity levels. In 2021, I declined weight loss surgery and weight loss drugs. I gave up added sugar, stop eating ultra processed foods, adopted a low carb Mediterranean diet and limited myself to two meals a day. I’ve lost 90 pounds and have continued to lose weight over the past two years. My blood tests, urine tests and blood pressure are in reference ranges across all factors. I reversed pre-diabetes, cured non-alcohol fatty liver and cured my metabolic disease. What I have done is what all patients on weight loss drugs and weight loss surgeries are supposed to do in addition to their course of medical intervention. It wasn’t easy. It required me to dramatically change what I put in my shopping cart and to reduce how often I eat at restaurants. I saved myself and my health insurer tens of thousands of dollars for treatments whose results do not last without changes in diet and lifestyle. If I can do it, anyone can. I’m a senior citizen. It’s never too late.
The "if I can do it, anyone can" is nonsense. Taking away sugary drinks and bad food for some people amounts to taking the only joy out of their lives. Now, I know that a lot about what "joy in life" actually is is a matter of perception, and perception can be altered. But that is not a quick and easy thing to do. You have changed, probably because you realized your lifestyle is killing you. Not everyone feels that living is worth the effort, and a lot more will only change when the realization of their life-threatening habits is immediately upon them.
I agree with you 100% I have hypothyroidism and even though I have to work twice as hard to take the weight off I would rather do the work than take an rx. Way to go btw I have lost like 75ibs in 2 years. ❤
@@VolkbrechtThese rx work by slowing your digestion and in some cases stoping it all together its called gastroparesis if your interested. It is not safe.
@@compendiumyo3358 If fat people were rational, they wouldn't be fat. Of course these drugs have side effects. The main mechanism you have outlined sounds suspiciously like it could promote stomach and/or intestinal cancer in the long run, aside from all the stuff that is known. But for people who can't bring themselves to not want to overindulge in unhealthy foods a drug that will take that decision from them is rather appealing, don't you think?
The fact that people are that lazy and have no self control is insane. They would rather take a expensive drug the rest of their lives instead of diet and exercise..... interesting.
The US is one of 2 countries with advertisements for prescription medications. Advertisements have 2 parts, 1 Commercials - which fundamentally corrupts the media, and the larger portion are directed at doctors - the 2nd part caused the Opioid Crisis. With out advertisements for prescription medications the US would likely have avoided the Opioid Crisis and been able to more properly punish the mega corporations that caused it.
I was 6 years old when the news pushed the story about a non-addictive opiate. At 6 I was familiar enough with the saying "opiate of the masses" to have asked what an opiate is. At 6 years old I knew the story made NO SENSE... Thats all I have to say about that....
Here, in the Netherlands, health insurance is mandatory. Basic insurance costs between €130 and €150 per month. People on benefits or on a low wage receive a monthly healthcare allowance from the government. The poorest people living at or below the poverty line will receive the full amount. The higher your income, the less healthcare allowance you will receive. The prices of the same medicines are many times cheaper here than in the United States, because the national government negotiates hard about this. And here's what the government has to say about it: "The Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) wants more insight into the cost structure of expensive medicines. Society has the right to know where the money from the health care premium goes." We have a fairly large government with a lot of civil servants. We grumble a lot about them and they cost a lot of money, but they get a lot done and I, as a citizen, am extremely grateful for that!
I stopped drinking Pepsi and coke. I cut out almost all sugars, and most starch from my diet. I put my blood sugar back under control and lowered my grocery bill dramatically. I am not on medication.
Same! Cut out sugar unnecessary carbs. Stabilized blood sugar. No more spikes, reduced hunger and eliminated chronic joint and soft tissue pain… Sugar is pure evil.
Keep in mind this is not for all diabetics. It's for type 2 which is much more easily controlled with diet and exercise. That's free. So, eat better and be active, then there will be very few who actually NEED this. Educate yourselves folks.
The affordable care act didn't include obesity coverage (and manner others) as a mandated benefit. This led to 90% of them not covering it at all, or, in he cases where it is covered, they require genetic testing to prove it's not your own fault (the testing is usually noncovered.)
@@VernCrisler That's the plan, not the ACA. The ACA mandated coverage but didn't put a cap on deductibles. Everyone that was too sick to insure before were now charging millions to every insurance that would have denied them before (preexisting conditions.) So what the ACA accomplished was essentially spreading out that debt to (not everyone) the poor people who can only afford high deductible plans. Now it's just the poor people paying for socialized medicine that they can't afford to use themselves.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug It's not though, necessarily, is it? It's cheaper to eat at fast food than to grocery shop, in my area. Wages weren't rising with inflation since the 70's and the recent inflation made that even harder on people. You could blame them before, at least partially, in most areas of the country, but now? not so much. They are being priced out of even fruit and veg my guy.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug To add to that, we are going to pay for treating the poor badly with our taxes, one way or another. Even if we don't pay for those drugs, we will pay for their medical care which rapidly increases in expensive, interventionary medicine as they plummet to their deaths in hospital beds. We will pay for it in additional supply costs as health issues go unaddressed, simply because they can't afford to live a healthy lifestyle with good food and doctor visits. We will pay for it as people are hewn from families with their deaths, creating voids in the cohesion of a family unit, leading to more poor outcomes and less stable opportunities. You may think you're apart from this now but it will catch up with us all and wildly imbalanced inequality is to blame for every penny lost.
My endocrinologist prescribed Ozempic and then Mounjaro, hoping to increase the dosage of the latter and in tandem, decrease the Glipizide I've been taking. Unfortunately, the pharmacist has been unable to fill my prescriptions of either of those on time, causing me to miss a dose in between refills, or one out of every five doses I was supposed to be taking. And the last time, my refill was on backorder for over three weeks, until they canceled it. So my endocrinologist re-did my Mounjaro prescription for the lowest dose, which was available, and bumped my Glipizide back up - basically reversing all the progress she was trying to make over the past year.
If you are type 2 diabetic there are so many things you can do..low carb diet..walk 10 minutes after each meal so your muscles can use the carbs..weight lift 3 to 4 times a week and walk walk walk stay active...some people use intermittent fasting as a tool as well
Why aren’t you using insulin? Exercise ,eliminate processed foods especially carbs, eat more vegetables and you won’t need these new GLP agonists. Lifestyle modifications work. People don’t trust vaccines but they will inject themselves with highly suspect peptides without fear.
I would also like to point out that if you get your Healthcare insurance through your job then your prescriptions may be covered separately from your overall Healthcare insurance which, for some reason, might not be communicated to you until you go to get an expensive prescription that you need right away and you find out you have no idea what your prescription insurance is. So you pay out of pocket and then you go to your company website to find out what it is and can't really find anything and it's not listed with your medical insurance because it's a completely different company and it's just saying buy at CVS? Like what? CVS Caremark? A pharmacy can't be insurance, too, that would obviously be against monopoly laws. Except, no wait. It is 😑 I legit thought that I just didn't have prescription insurance anymore because I had an HSA. The pharmacists kept insisting it had to exist. I paid out of pocket for almost a year before I somehow stumbled upon the right cheat code for connecting my CVS Caremark account with my CVS account (they're completely separate logins) and insurance started covering part of the cost. I still don't know how it's paid for because it's not mentioned in my benefits page. Vision and dental are also different insurances. I don't f*ck with my HSA (health savings account) because I want it as extra retirement money. One year I got an FSA (flexible savings account) so I could buy glasses tax-free, but that was a different banking account from my HSA and neither are accounts I have with banks for my personal banking. You need a f*cking college course to understand this sh*t But it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. (It's f*cked)
I feel like the FSA was not explained well to you if you had both an HSA and an FSA at once. FSA’s are a separate account of tax free money set aside to pay for prescriptions, glasses, copays, etc. You should either receive a debit-like card for use when paying for these items or a login to file claims with your FSA. Many employers offer FSAs for anyone participating in their insurance whereas only people with a high-deductible insurance can get an HSA as there are different rules on things like yearly rollover (FSAs typically don’t) and employer matching.
@@somenerdyblonde Me: explains how complicated and non-intuitive American health care is You: Hey, I don't think you fully understood HSA and FSAs 😑 So thanks for reinforcing my point but a) I did have that info and b) you're not quite correct. There are contribution limits to both HSAs and FSAs with tax penalties if you exceed them. If you have both an HSA and a LPFSA (limited purpose FSA or FSAs that are HSA friendly), you essentially double the amount of tax-free medical expenditures you can have in a year. I really didn't need it for what I used it for, so I only had it the first year to purchase glasses. It's also convenient to use a LPFSA if you're using your HSA for bonus retirement funds (a thing I explained in my original comment) and don't want to touch it which is how I treat my HSA. I'd have to be real stupid to miss the two separate cards and accounts I was given
I’ve learned employer covered healthcare is practically worthless. Would do anything when I was hit by a car while running. Wouldn’t even pay for the bloody tetanus shot. Let alone any of the actual “care” I got. Let’s be real they just cleaned the blood and trying to wash the skid marks off my body and told me to suck it up. But that cost a shit ton of money…what does my $250 insurance cover? Apparently nothing…
2:00 I think I know the punch-line: Pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than R&D. --- Edit: Coming from Canada I had no idea that the US government was not allowed to negotiate prices. Whichever lobbyist wrote that law probably got a nice bonus.
I was on the Tirzepitide/Mounjaro study. My A1C dropped 2 points, and I lost 50 pounds. The side effects were minimal. After the study, before Mounjaro was approved, I was on Ozempic and suffered from several side effects, including gall bladder issues. I was so pleased when Mounjaro came out, got a prescription, and discovered even my insurance won't cover it. Ain't the American health system great?😡
I lost 130 pounds in 10 months using a whole food plant exclusive diet. When I started I was taking 23 medications and had many illnesses including Type II diabetes. Reversed all illnesses, take 0 medications and I have kept the weight off 11 years. So I’m not willing to pay more for insurance just because people want these drugs.
@@doctork1708 For real, I don't understand why people don't just eat healthier. I recently gave some greens from a friend's garden to my neighbor, who's a grandmother. She gave me some spaghetti & meat sauce in exchange. She mentioned how she went to a church thing recently and was surprised to see spinach in the pasta. I told her, yea you can put anything you want in pasta sauce, I usually saute a bunch of different vegetables with it. She seemed incredulous, the only thing she's ever seen in pasta sauce is meat & cheese. Americans are so ignorant when it comes to food, it's crazy. Everyone would rather pay $10k for a fat pill than learn how to eat a healthy diet.
@doctork1708 right. Tell me you have 0 clue about the disease of obesity without telling me. Great that you could do it and maintain without meds. For those who can't, they need the meds. For life. Just like the folks with chronic high bp and cholesterol.
Oddly enough. I was asked a year ago by my primary doctor if i wanted to take it. I am diabetic and because of my hypothyroid and various other medications i'm on, i have a very difficult time losing weight. I believed her that it was safe, but i brought up the fact that i didn't want to go on something that i wouldn't be able to get off of. I had gotten my sugars and weight under control so it wasn't completely necessary. Watching this, I'm glad i never decided to take it.
I'm totally uneducated about this subject. I'm just curious: how comes that there is no long term benefits when people could use such a drug as an opportunity for getting to a stably lower body mass amd change their eating habits for the better? Is there any chemical reason that would leqd people back to their old eating habits as soon as they're off the drug?
@al8-.W people who rely on a drug to help them lose weight often become dependent on it. Once they go off of it, they lose any impulse control and often end up putting on more weight than they stared with. Also, with some of these drugs, your body's natural systems also slow down productivity because they have depended on another chemical introduced to the body to regulate it. It is certainly beneficial if your weight has gotten out of hand, or you can't control insulin levels. For me, however, I thought it would be better to deal with without medical intervention.
I benefited greatly from this med...just went off it, blood sugar shot up and very severe cold turkey drug withdrawals. Wieght is up about 3 lbs. Drug price to me went up 7 TIMES!
If only there was a different solution to obesity that involved not spending money, like having a decent job that doesn't involve 80 hours a week in a chair, having to eat garbage because everything else takes time or money you don't have.
It's not just that, people's mentality has already been set to instant gratification, I've been drinking both forms of kefir for almost a year. I've tried telling people about it but some just don't have time or simply refuse to even try it as if they have given up on everything but medications.
@@squidward5110 Well, I'll just hop in my wheelchair, magically control the weather so I can go outside, magically control every other person around me so no one aggravates my insanely fragile health condition, leaving me in bed for days or sometimes weeks, and then magically levitate my way around the kitchen with energy I never have and coordination I don't have to cook a meal I probably won't be able to even eat due to extreme dietary restrictions. Yep, I'll be skinny in no time with all this magical nonsense on my side.
this makes me sick a company charging people $15,000 a year to use a drunk THEY MUST TAKE FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. This is ethicly wrong on so many levels.
To play devil’s advocate, would you rather the drug cost next to nothing and have people forgo adopting a healthy diet because they just get a shot instead. Even that seems unethical.
@@Typhoonbladefist How would that be unethical? people choosing to eat what they desire and using science to avoid the down side is not 'unethical' its just smart.
We do not have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system. We started down this path when they start allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise. Drug costs skyrocketed after the start of the happen, and then you had an ignorant public demanding this drug or that drug from doctors. We also failed to have a single pair system of some sort like all other modern countries. And like every facet of our society, we have lead corporations not only control their industry but also our government. That only that politics and politicians have made wedge issues of healthcare, and mainly southern states have Pastor Conan laws that don’t respect medical decisions by professional doctors. Southern states have some of the worst health outcomes in the world. We no longer have a republic. Welcome to the Oligarchy of these disunited states.
When a drug comes along claiming to help people lose weight but you need to diet and exercise for it to work shouldn't you be sceptical. If a wanted a weight loss drug i want it to work when i'm laying on the couch for two weeks
Just imagine if the fire department worked like US healthcare. Fire insurance would be an entirely different thing. When you called 911 the first question would be who's your fire insurance provider. And guess what. There was a time that's how fire departments worked. At the beginning of the last century fire department were a subscription service.
In some states, that is still the case. Louisiana, for example, you have to regularly pay to have the option to have fire fighting services assist you. Ridiculous.
Yes, it is so much better when the government control everything. You really need to inject some common sense and learn about history before you try to take all of us down that route. Pure stupidity.
They’d be cheaper if it was subscription based. Adding a government middle man does NOT I assure you make things cheaper 😂😂. There’s probably like 3-4 house fires a month in my city of 65k. It wouldn’t cost much. Call it $39/month to the fire station. That’d be 30 million in revenue a year. Think they could operate on that? Me too. Now that the governments involved lord knows how much wasted money is there. And I’ll bet 30 cents on the dollar goes to administration.
Did you just imply that private insurance middle man is cheaper than government as a middle man? Since the subject of the video is healthcare, nearly every developed country will prove you wrong.
@@CakebatteredHe's a good little brainwashed sheep that bought into the Corporation talking point that Government will cost more when been proven by Medicare that it is way less overhead than Insurance companies taking their 35% right off the top.
Good news! Liraglutide, the same class of medication as Monjaro, Ozempic, etc. is going generic this next year which will make it so much cheaper as no GLP-1 med is generic currently.
Someone will tweak the formula somewhere to keep that patent going, or they’ll the the same as that evil pod did with insulin by buying the rights to it and driving up the price. I’ll watch.
Down with greed, Down with corruption. Hold everyone accountable. These evil people make people sick and up charge Medical practices, vile evil people. Disgusting
It’s a dang miracle for me. Completely changed my life. My sugar levels are perfect and I’ve lost 20 pounds within 3 months. No more headaches or sweating. I’m so thankful!
Sorry. Some say it may be the injection site that might be associated with side-effects. Others say it may be certain types of food you're eating. I don't think we'll know for sure until the companies do full scale testing for side effects. Maybe you could try Rybelsus?
I've been prescribed Maunjaro at 15mg, the highest dosage, and it has been unavailable on 3 occasions. On 2 of those occasions it was unavailable for over a month. All of this because people are getting Maunjaro prescribed off label for weight loss. I have an appointment with my doctor to see if he can prescribe a lower dosage for me to take twice as much of but it seems unlikely that my insurance will cover that because of the cost and there is no guarantee that any dosage will be available at any given time
That's why I like living in Thailand part time. Pretty much every drug we have in America has been copied by Indian pharmaceutical companies whi don't care about copyright laws and you can buy high-quality versions of our pharmaceuticals for 98% less of the price.
The government may not be able to set prices for drugs, but what they can do is 1. Increase taxes on profits by defining a luxury drug bracket (companies will be desperate to avoid getting into that bracket) 2. Reduce the patent time for new drugs.
i think a reasonable way of setting a price would be to audit the price other insurance companies purchase it for and just take an average of that. this would be a way to not have the govt negotiate the price directly and just use the market rate.
As a diabetic who actually needs to take this to regulate my blood sugar, the shortages caused by off brand prescriptions strictly for weight loss are extremely aggravating. It's hard to fill my Rx sometimes. The weight loss side effects is nice, but I kind of wish it didn't do that.
Even if there weren't any shortages of prescription medications the pharmaceutical companies will still make us pay the same amount of money. The cost of drugs is a really big threat to the USA national security and other nations.
So we should allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices (DUH!) and/or not approve these drugs for weight loss other than in "extreme" cases. Now we can try to figure out what "extreme" means. Seriously, it's ridiculous that the government can't negotiate drug prices.
So, no administration has created any legislation, or amended any existing rules to medical administrations since GWB? 0bama was completely unable to radically change the system when his signature program was rammed through? If it was so bad, why didn't he change it?
Remember Martin Shkreli? He was selling Daraprim for $750 per pill. A drug that a high school class mimicked for $2 per pill. The entire industry is like that. Without negotiation, they will charge 200x+ the manufacturing cost, because they can.
It would be interesting to know why non-American pharmaceutical companies like Novo Nordisk isn’t just outcompeting Eli Lilly? Is there some tax on imported pharmaceuticals to keep prices high?
This is so disingenuous. No, you dont need to take the drug(s) forever. If people upon losing their goal weight were to eat the correct amount of calories to sustain that weight and no more, they would not magically create matter on their person.
So interesting how drug names are given. Mounjaro is obviously supposed to sound like a mountain, to give the air of being adventurous and active. Moun resembles mount(ain) and Jaro like the end of Killamonjaro
This drug was manufactured for people with diabetes,it was not manufactured for people to loose weight. Now the problem here in Australia is diabetics were having trouble getting this medication because all the obese people were using it to loose weight. Our medical system put a stop to people getting it to loose weight after about a year ! Now only diabetics can get prescribed ozempic here in Australia and about time too. If you want to loose weight start eating properly and exercise more,you shouldn’t be using a diabetic drug that a lot of diabetics need to regulate their blood sugar levels. Lifestyle change is what is needed for obese people not diabetic drugs.
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I Hope they pass legislation that has our government setting drug prices. We can create mechanisms to reward teams and companies for R&D and discovery, and keep those separated from the price setting so we don’t end up with people that are sick or dying not receiving beneficial treatment from a pill that might cost $1 to produce..but is priced at $1000 due to a patent.
The R&D is mostly done at universities that are taxpayer funded, and then the patent is sold for cheap to a company so they can maximise the profits. Which is of course why it's so expensive. They bought the patent to make it expensive. So I don't think the last part of your solution would change much.
Also, Chuck Grassley holding business accountable is one of the most laughable things I've witnessed. He doesn't want to be there, his fellow Senator had to have twisted his arm.
If the public invests in r&d they should be able to aggressively negotiate on their future purchases, or demand similar returns to those private sector investors on the same product.
Obesity mainly comes from high glycemic carbohydrate diet and high caloric intake. Take the drug to lose the weight and start a keto diet to keep the weight off.
Before bariatric surgery i used to come out of pocket for my diabetic meds because it ended up being cheaper. Found out when i broke my last vial and ran out to grab more at a Walmart rx instead of calling/ waiting for my doc office. Was blown away my insurance not only came out of my check but also was costing me more in meds
I'm a pharmacy tech, been one for ten years, and it's crazy what insurances and drug companies get away with in the US.
It should be criminal!
hey...I would love to hear more about this....do you have any thing else to say about it?
They're enabled by the politicians they give favors, bribes, and jobs to.
I wonder what cultural phobia we have that prevents us from doing anything about it...
Nahhhhh the freemarket will find the solution, I'm sure it's profitable.
You know it would awesome if someone from the inside could... you know... gather some documents showing just how insanely ludicrous the industry's practices are and... you know... give them to a reputable journalist?
"Could break America's health care system?" That implies it isn't already broken.
Wrong. It works exactly the way it was meant to.
it broken an we all know it but what interesting is could cripple the inter system as it is now both public and privet bring the house down and forcing reform
@@milkdrinker7 You can build something to be broken
@@Earthboundmike again, it's not broken. Our healthcare system was designed to extract profit from the masses, and it does that quite well, at least in the short term.
I found the smartest person in the room. Kudos
I have to correct one bit, pharma companies do not spend money on their own R&D. Their "R&D" is actually just their marketing. Public money covers nearly all R&D which happens at publicly funded universities. Well, they do, do R&D on drugs they own only to extend their patents.
The Fed gov should nationalize all the pharma companies.
Was coming on here just to point that out. Guess you beat me to it.
But yeah, the US taxpayer fronts the money to research the drug, then big pharma swoops in and takes the patent before charging us a second time.
@@GuardianofRoin
So, universities do the hard work, and the billionaires reap the benefits.
God damn america 😑
This is not true. Pfizer paid over 11 billion in 2022 for R&D. My sister actually just got laid off from Pfizer because the company wants to get away from R&D due to the costs and risks.
@@robert2690 Socialize the costs, privatize the profits.
They pay for the clinical trials, which are extremely expensive because of the population size and duration.
decades ago I worked for a market research firm in their "medical division". We called doctors on be half of prescription drug companies (who kept their identities hidden to the participants but we knew who sponsored it) and paid the doctors hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars for their participation. The companies wanted to know how to better market their drugs even if they KNEW their drug was inferior. They were more interested in being able to sell it even if they knew there was a better drug on the market to treat the patient. They wanted to know things like what colors and packaging would be more attractive. They had no interest in the patient's well-being. Only their own financial gain.
My mom was on it, she lost a huge amount of weight and managed to keep it off. She was perscribed it for prediabetic conditions to keep her from going over the edge. Worked quite well and she is in much better health now. She was only on it for about 3-4 months last year.
Did she regain after stopping ?
How is mom doing now? Is she still taking the medication or she maintaining with exercise and diet 🤔
Rich people abusing the system to make themselves richer? I'm shocked. Truly shocked...
😂😂
[edited, was misunderstood] Sure, we could be sarcastic and dismissive about it, but I think we can do something about this. on the one hand yeah, of course the rich try this and maybe that's normal or whatever, but on the other, what do we do about it? like how do you or I found a better managed company to make some of the money eli lily is? sounds intractable in this environment to me. eli lily has captured that market in a way that doesn't permit viable competition, we can't just go found such a company - what are we going to do, research and develop a competing product? for an effect that precise? and then prove it works, to federal standards? very few companies employ the researchers necessary, and those researchers don't get funded for free; the management system of who funds them for what instructions is a mess, and no historical management scheme has been dramatically better (edit: so we need to make a better one in the shell of the old - but it has to be better for the first time, past attempts to use theory to make better economic systems haven't gone perfectly); there have always been severe human rights violations when some internal authority in whatever system becomes corrupt. It's the well-trained researchers doing it, but the funding structure around deciding what instructions their employer/funder from their institution gives them is in these organizations, organizations whose internal conversations have lots of detail around how to constrain their customers to be trapped on the drug, and lots of discussion about how to steal from the few tax dollars you were paying to help others.
@@laurenpinschannels But what about capitalism, free market, and bootstraps? Those solve everything!
@@laurenpinschannels I love how your argument is basically, "Who cares if the system is shitty? I'm used to this shitty system and any system you come up with will eventually turn shitty, too."
I'm going to stick to not purchasing chemicals from the companies "solving" the problems they created in the first place by dumping forever chemicals in our water and wrapping all of our food in plastic. It's only a matter of time before we find out how dangerous this drug actually is. Besides, if all of the options truly are shitty as you say, then I'm going with the one that costs me the least.
Eating the rich is something that is looking more and more likely to be literal soon...
I like how they can use public money to make a medicine and then sell it back to the public.
In December of 2019, nearly every US airline company reported near record profits in the billions of dollars.
In April of 2020, just 4 months later, they were crying they needed a bailout. In less than 4 months the company somehow did not have the billions in profits they claimed they had and needed taxpayers to bail them out, so where did their billions in profits go?
@@id10t98 i’m guessing you slept through the whole Covid debacle where the government shut everything down.
@@Thehappybirder luckily i got fired from my job in August of 2020 because a Mexican and a Black guy made fake accusations against me and two other white guys and 2 of us got fired and 1 got demoted from a boss to a mechanic. I have been avoiding society since.
@@Thehappybirder they cant reduce flights with reduced customers and save on operating costs
Welcome to America. The worst part is that america was great when doctors gave their paten for free and that people wanting to make America great againt would piss on these people...
The American healthcare system is thoroughly cruel & unusual.
Unfortunately the constitution only protects against cruel and unusual _punishment_ - not cruel and unusual _treatment._
Either suffer or move to Poland where it is so much better.
So true. I don't know how many times I've been in a blind panic because I couldn't afford my epilepsy meds or couldn't get an appointment with my doctor to get them or something went wrong at the pharmacy, etc, etc. It's terrifying to have a life threatening disorder and not know if you'll be able to get care.
@@PraiseTheFSMonster On the flipside, sometimes you can afford epilepsy meds, you even can get appointment to get them prescribed, but there are no meds in the pharmacies, except for that single one that's on the other side of the city you live in.
"...their one goal is maximizing revenue regardless of the human consequences..."
Whadaya expect with that business gospel?
Doctors in the UK *ON STRIKE*.
Now waiting times for something like hip surgery is 72 weeks!
In the US it averages 3 weeks.
When he mentioned Merk saying that the government negotiating drug prices is unconstitutional, my soul shot out of my body. Just disgusting.
I witnessed the whole thesis of this video personally when I was doing my Master’s in Public Health in Sweden in 2014-2016. I was a public health student at Lund University in Sweden in 2015 when Novo Nordisk came to our Health Economics class to discuss their work. They mentioned Ozempic and how they found that it also is a weight loss drug. They told us that they would sell it in Europe as a diabetes drug because of the laws in the EU, however I’m the US, they would market it as a weight loss drug and charge $84k a year (remember, this was 2015, they were still figuring it out). I raised my hand, as an American, and said to them “so, what you’re saying is that you’re going to make it so expensive that insurance isn’t going to cover it, even though the people who need it the most are poor people, since diabetes and obesity disproportionately effect these populations?” And their response was “yeah, basically.” I’m being specific about the classes and university because this can be fact checked.
All this, to eat carbs, freely.
Gee, if only there was something, someone could do, that was almost literally, free, that could fix this.
Hmm. Don't eat carbs, and walk. Omg people, wake up.
Well...here in the USA, many poor fat people are on disability now and because they've never worked at anything in life except eating, they get Medicaid which pays for everything. No premiums, no co-pays, there's no such thing as drug tiers for them.
Meanwhile, those of us who have spent our lives working/earning money, have to pay a premium for Medicare, co-pays on doctor visits, surgeries and prescriptions. Yes we have a tier, many non-generic drugs aren't covered at all, even when there isn't an equivalent. Good luck getting an approval through appeal with physician backing.
The office drones at Medicare and private insurance decide whether drugs and procedures are paid for, not anyone with an actual medical degree.
Insurance premiums are ridiculously high, due in large part to somebody having to pay to subsidize the "poor".
These "poor" get free health, dental and vision care, get any free food with no restrictions up to $600 month, section 8 housing many times for $100 rent that includes ALL utilities including cable TV and internet because those are "necessities" now. Lest I forget, they also get free cell service.
The Medicare I pay for AND supplement only pays for 2 dental cleanings yearly and about 25% on crown/filling. Too bad it doesn't cover dentures because teeth are cosmetic, not necessary to live..according to Medicare....unless you're on Medicaid then they're a necessity and covered 🤬
@@MrGamman3ytit enrages me that being obese is a disabling condition now. Any illness that can be cured is not a disease! For most, type 2 diabetes is cured by putting down the cake, getting off the chair and walking around daily.
Ask anybody with an incurable disease what they'd do or give up to be cured. I wish it was as easy as diet and exercise
@@tracyjohnson5023you’re 100% correct. 😵💫
@@tracyjohnson5023it’s possible to complain about the US healthcare system without demonizing the poor.
The people living on welfare and Medicaid are not your enemy - it’s the billionaires who exploit labor and buy off government to extract maximum wealth out of the American people, regardless of the human cost.
Part of what makes this possible is keeping the middle class angry at the poor for “freeloading” - while the rich pay a lower tax rate, and amass larger and larger piles of money…
In other words they keep us fighting over the crumbs while they make off with the whole cake.
The pharmaceutical industry has proven itself unwilling to regulate itself, so I'm strongly in favor of the government forcing prices down
Just remember the government is already too powerful and will never be your friend.
Wenis
@@jamesabestos2800 can't argue with that
I don't like government using coercion, but I demand that it engage in good faith negotiation. What our government has done is shirk its responsibility and let Big Pharma dictate what it will extract from US citizens. To maximize profits over the health of people.
You can't even get 9 Judges to do the right thing when regulating themselves. Keep dreaming!
EVERYTHING is America is price-gouged. My kid is in Japan right now. The food is not only infinitely better in quality in Japan, the prices are jaw-droppingly cheap. She's loving her waffles and coffee from the Japanese version of 7/11 for $2.65. (IHOP in my hood is advertising pancakes with coffee $7.99 an its garbage) Sushi that would be $100 here...$12.00. Americans are gouged for drugs, food, housing, transportation and we still think of ourselves as "free". We are completely ignorant slaves to "shareholder value" and a government owned and operated by the share-holders aka CEOs.
could not have said it better. Thanks!
@@marnie8007 Yeah, and the other half thinks communism is the solution.
Japan is the last civilized functioning society in the world. I hope they keep their borders closed. As soon as they open their borders, they will lose it all.
This view is rather opposed to reality in my opinion. You're comparing the cost of basic goods to Japan, one of the few countries along with SK that is even more of a hyper-capitalist dystopia than the US is. If you compared the US to well-regulated places like in Europe, where the government isn't run by CEOs, the prices of those basic goods are actually much higher, especially when you take the lower salaries into account.
@@alpacagurl92 Ok but they still prove that it's possible to feed everyone high quality food for cheap. Japan has issues but their food isn't one of them.
I worked at Gilead for the better part of a decade. As soon as we had a marketable drug and became profitable, the company changed dramatically. Maximum pricing strategies were just the tip of the iceberg. But there’s no pharmaceutical company with clean hands. And by the way, the claim that they spend “billions” on research? That’s an exaggeration. Much of the basic research comes from government-funded research grants and university work, not big pharma. Hundreds of millions? Yes. Billions on one drug? No.
Why do you hate on Big Pharma like that? When they say they spent billions on research they are being truthful. It's just that the research involved how they could give billions in bonuses and salary for the C Suite members and what they could write off on their tax bill.
Stop being so negative on those doing God's Work...😏
That they’re called “Gilead” just makes me sus of them already…
I believe it!
I'm glad u decided that working for a drug company that cares not about its users but about $$ was not for you. We can always make a dollar but you've heard the saying about a bridge builder.
@@jasonchristopher2977 ,
At the risk of sounding even more ignorant than I already do, I don’t know the saying about the bridge builder…please explain.
Something got glossed over in this doc, and I think it's extremely important. Since the virality of these drugs for weight loss, the availability of all of the injectables in this category has plummeted. This is a challenge for diabetics who need the drug because they are struggling to control their BS on traditional insulin products. I have several type 1 and type 2 diabetic friends who were originally put on Ozempic, only for their local pharmacies to dry up. You stress that if you stop using the drug, your weight will return. For diabetics, it also means that you have to switch to a drug with a different modality, which may not be an option for some. It's sad that this point isn't in the forefront of the news about the situation; it's similar to the adderall shortage happening right now, because people with legit prescriptions are now competing with those who faked their way to getting it, or those who are just turning around and selling what they get.
How do you know people are "faking" their way into adderal Rx? Seems like that would be on the drug company for not producing enough to raise prices and CLAIMING people are faking their symptoms en masse to hide their artificial price gouge
The real problem for me: I have Diabetes II and this drug was saving my life. I cannot find it now because of people using it for weight control. I need it to live. I need it to not go blind. I need it to not have a limb amputated.
had you try eat less?
@@jackli6592 That works for weight loss but diabetes is when your body doesn't have enough insulin.
@@benishborogove2692 its not your body doesnt make enough insulin, its you eat WAY too much. this is why lots type2 diabetes when they stop eating much, they are CURED.
Use Berberine. Same action - lowers A1-C/ less than 1/10th the cost.
@@vlmhma.7414 Berberine may have great promise but like some popular COVID remedies, suffers a severe lack of quality research. There is a statistical method called meta-analysis that bundles together a bunch of small studies. This is not the same level of proof as a large, multi-center trial. The papers I have read all are careful to point out this limitation. They use words like "*may* have *similar*" actions as some pharmaceuticals.
From the horror stories I've seen America's health system is already broken, putting profit above the health of your nation is just plain stupidity.
Profit isn't the problem, it's bureaucracy. FDR started us on this path and politicans over the past 90 years expanded it.
Everything is for profit in America.
You’re not wrong - but it’s only PART of the problem.
Exactly. Unfortunately, it is also the standard and has been for many, many years.
@@chrisE815 Your health care is marked up by 1000% because hospitals are required to treat uninsured emergencies and expect insurance companies to negotiate down the price.
With a single-payer system the government negotiates the price periodically. Hospitals and doctor's offices then have a predictable revenue stream.
@@chrisE815 That is blatantly wrong. Our system is broken because it is all designed to make a profit. Shall I send you some book titles to read?
I’m diabetic and live in Australia and get 1mg pen for $60 each month (works amazing for stabilizing my blood sugar btw). American’s should be way more angry about how price gouged they get.
We're truly lucky down here mate. Stay well
How much does your insurance have to pay monthly. In the USA on Medicare I am limited to 4,600 dollars a year for prescriptions.
I promise we are angry. My sister died of poverty in Florida. Her routine healthcare was done in an RV in a parking lot. She had to be there by 6 a.m. and bring a lawnchair. She worked herself to death providing for her family cleaning other people's homes.
$60 AUD is onlt $40 USD too. that's fucking insane. i would need to pay oover $1,000/month to get my hands on this.
@@TD052
I believe healthcare there is a government service.
...The reason Medicare doesn't cover everything?
To deliberately create a market for Medicare advantage plans- which are for-profit insurance.
🤬
This is why medical research has no business being a private sector thing. How much does the drug cost to manufactuer. Okay, make a law stating that they can have a 50% markup on the cost of manufacturing. If they're not okay with that, look at their RnD costs for it, how much did it cost to make? Okay we'll give you three times your investment, you're done making money off it now. The idea that you can pay people to learn and experiment and then use knowledge against the working class is insane.
It's not insane, it's immoral. That said, it's also been an "idea" since the dawn of humanity. The point is made no need to be dramatic.
Most R&D is done with public money at the university level. The only real R&D pharma companies do is to extend their patents.
most of the fundamental research is done by public institutions or with public money
@@publicguy1664 this is not true. My sister, a biochemist, recently got laid off from Pfizer because they wanted to get out of the R&D due to the costs and risks of it. Drug companies pay a lot into R&D and sometimes drugs fail leading to them having to increase the prices of other drugs to cover the losses.
@@Typhoonbladefist
Tax dollars pay for R&D. It’s a known fact.
I lost 140 lbs on Manjuro! For someone who was 436lbs this year was a miracle for me personally! I changed my eating and began to workout! I am now 295! I am on Wegovy now since my insurance was not going to cover it unless I was type 2 diabetic! Wegovy has been slower but it is beginning to work now!
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They could use the sugar, corn, dairy & animal agriculture subsidies to pay for it. That would be pure irony or karma. Not sure which.
Jesus christ now its self sustaining. What have you done
I fear you have not met America, ma'am...
seed oils. Ban seed oils.
we could also cut the 275 dillion we spent im oil company handouts and building new interstat as will.
or fat poor people can eat less... that would be to easy tho
The fact that prices are so high for insurance and medication along with the fact that Medicare can't negotiate on all drugs makes Americans look at the numbers and think we can't do M4A. But the reality is if the US just kept stakes in the drugs the government funded the research for and we cornered the market by having everyone in the same insurance pool through M4A which could negotiate prices we would all have coverage at a fraction of current costs. But that's not going to make a few people insanely rich so we choose having more billionaires instead.
This!
What is m4a besides an audio format?
@@dannydaw59a form of universal health coverage that Bernie Sanders proposed.
@@dannydaw59 it's shorthand for Medicare for all. Government insurance for everyone.
We need to arrange for a trip to the titanic for all the health denial company executives. Momento mori, and all that.
The American Health Care model is simple... Your money, or your life. Which one do you want to keep? If you are wealthy, you get to keep both. If you are poor (or even middle class), you have to choose.
For people in Medicaid it's even simpler. Since they can't make any money off you, all they want is your life.
100%
People need to take some responsibility for their health and stop thinking that a doctors gonna do that for you or a drug or a hospital or somebody else it’s your health not all those other peoples health. It’s your responsibility to figure out how to keep yourself healthy.
@@mattm1686 I have agree with you on that score though I do not think everything is preventable but a lot of it yes. The problems is too many people delegate their brains and problem solving skills to paid-off "experts"
Stop eating carbs, and walk.
I've reduced carbs 10 years ago, to maybe half, like 80 per day.
Now down to 25 or so.
Why have the greatest bullet proof vest, just not purchase bullets? Problem solved.
Oh, and walk.
People who are healthy and look great already and are taking this to lose 10 pounds are fuxking over people who need it.
The gag of all this is, weight loss can be free. No drug needed.
Thanks. This is what unfettered capitalism does. This is its purpose. This is its function. Anyone clutching their pearls over this sort of abuse must either shut up, or admit that Laissez-faire capitalism is a disaster. I get so tired of people holding up examples like this without ever acknowledging that our economic system is the real problem. Corporations own the government to the point that it's unlikely we'll ever change this without revolution. And it's spreading globally. tavi.
Right? It’s not broken, it’s working as they designed it to work: to take everything from everyone except a few
You think unfettered socialism would be better? BTW, capitalism is not "unfettered" in this country, never has been.
@@VernCrisler I only know that what we have doesn't work. And I'm pretty sure our system and "commies" are not the only two choices. Only people who eat, drink, and poop dogma think that. We can come up with something better. tavi.
Except this is not Laissez faire capitalism... under a free market patents would not be a thing, so there's no reason someone else couldn't make the drug and undercut them.
The biggest issue is that they didn't do the research for the drug. Universities did. They just filed the patent and funded the studies. Make it illegal to patent anything that involves published research, and you would eliminate most of these issues
@@markmacgallager2670 I think I can agree with you. In actuality, the gila monster owns the original patent for GLP-1 drugs. I'm not sure exactly what is patented with these drugs -- the drug itself or the means of delivery. Some of the compounding pharmacies are adding B vitamins to the GLP--1 / GIP activators, perhaps to escape patent restrictions?
I mean, its already broken, but ya...
The problem starts when they decided they’re worth more than someone else.
If the people at Killy honestly believed they were inherently equal to the rest of us, they wouldn’t be so willing to sew seeds of suffering and destruction to fill their pockets with such disgusting greed.
And they all look a lot like deer while they're walking to their cars, too.
Isn't that funny?
@@UsenameTakenWasTakencause like deer. They know if found in front of the wrong humans. They will 100% be shot.
They need a quick replacement for opioids, what is insane is that people still believe in pharma fairy tales, that perilous journey never goes well in the end.
It's time to start reading Marx & Engels.
the problem starts and ends with greed
Thanks to the Republicans for backing the Drug Companies by not allowing legislation to allow the government to negotiate prices ! Vote Blue !
Maximizing revenue regardless of human consequences - the root of most evil in the world. We really need a model of economy that legally enforces not going too far in this matter. Financial sustainability (including planned expansions and RnD) is good enough. There's no need to take more.
Feels like this "having the government negotiate prices with the private sector" also relates to the housing market. When you look at successful long term housing policies Vienna does this well by having a large enough supply of public housing that the private sector has to compete with the public (not for profit) housing market. Here in the US our government has exacts no power or leverage in setting or negotiating prices so insurance, pharmaceutical, and real estate companies can get away with price fixing to maximize profit at any cost.
one of the thing drive up the cost of rantels is there being treaded like stocks. some cities have up to 30% of there rantel properties vancanet becouse filling the, would lower the demanted and there for property value
Sounds exactly how Republicans want it
everything that the government gets involved in ends up leading to a worse outcome for citizens and consumers, look at skyrocketing home and rent prices, college tuition, the PPP loans that reduced the value of the dollar and super charged inflation.
My friend works for Novartis which invests by far the highest of any company into r&d and I think they're around 2% of their overall budget. Most pharmaceutical companies are at less than half a percent of their overall budget. Many are at like .2%. The r&d explanation is pure nonsense
They spend far more on stock buybacks.
It's unbelievable what Pharma executives are paid and the benefits they have. Very disturbing to know....@@Cakebattered
Only 2 countries on earth allow drug companies to advertise on TV. The US is one of them.
I pay $25 through my insurance
You guys deliver the best short-form investigative reporting. So much admiration for your teams and thank you as always
Seize the patents put it into public domain, problem solved.
Copyrights and patents should be abolished across the board. They only ever serve the rich and powerful.
Yes, we should do that. The government shouldn't do that though.
lol, that is illegal, and the moment you do it you watch every one of those companies reduce america to a sub rd world nation.
Seizing patents would end innovation.
The whole pharma system relies on the politicians backing them. Get the donations (bribes) from corporations to politicians outlawed. I know haha haha, yeah right. Then vote in the non corporate backed politicians in order to see change.
You can't have M4A without negotiating drug prices.
How about make healthcare a basic human right. And also ruthlessly persecute junk science based medicines like anti-vaxxers.
You spoke absolute truth in the first clause of that sentence.
@@Laotzu.Goldbugwow, what a clever Nazi
I find it pathetic that people take this instead of living a healthy lifestyle. Should be if you absolutely need it. Not a cheat code because people are weak
Why should the Taxpayers foot the bill for people who got themselves obese?
Local places offer no cost nutritional classes, learn to cook and stop eating out...
They forget side effects just to lose weight?
Weigh the costs
Your gonna lose s lot of weight, spending the money on this drug instead of food.
Just like there’s side effects to MANY drugs
theres also side effects to having weight......
@@emeraldbonsai self discipline is free
It would probably cost you an extra $1,000 per month for a proper healthy diet, that is "if" you had the willpower to maintain it. On the other hand, to be completely dependent (addicted) to a very expensive drug in order to stay thin while eating unhealthy foods is kind of ridiculous. It reminds me of my sister who eats ice cream and then takes an extra dose of insulin, ridiculous.
I was lucky enough to get my Maunjaro prescription approved by my insurance company. I lost about eleven or twelve percent of my body weight in the first month and then leveled off. But that's not why I take it. After a septic infection a couple of years ago, I ended up with type 2 diabetes and some kidney disease. Maunjauro treats the first perfectly and may help with the second. My blood sugar was stabilized at a normal level within the first week. It remains to be seen if the benefits disappear immediately if I stop taking it no matter what though. I hold out hope, that by stabilizing the hormone functions that control blood sugar my own pancreas can be retrained to respond in a normal fashion after a more lengthy period of using the drug. I'll have to keep my eye out for any new studies that examine this possibility in the years to come. Assuming the drug continues to be covered by my insurance.
why didnt you just eat less.,....
Good luck.👍
+
This drug has also been really helpful for my mom’s diabetes. The shortages created by the off-label usage for weight loss is a hardship on anyone who uses it as indicated for T2DM.
Walking, eating high protein diet, and doing body weight exercises would make it so you don’t have to pay a drug company to force your body to do what it would do naturally. Just saying.
Out of curiosity was it Covid that kicked in your diabetes? Because it was for me. I’m interested in finding out if anyone else has this side effect from the steroids they gave patients to combat Covid 19
My Doc has tried putting me on a few of these boutique diabetes drugs. Every time I call my insurance plan to check the cost, and it comes in at $400 or more per month, I simply turn it down. I need it, but I'm not making a new car payment per month for milligrams of a drug with no end in site. We are the dumbest country in the world when it comes to healthcare.
It can be a good investment for a particular kind of patient: the ones that know that in theory they can lose weight, but fall off the wagon before they make it over the hump. Weight loss isn't complicated, but it's still hard, and a lot of people lack the willpower to see it through, especially when sugaring up is such an easy fix to feeling bad. But once people made it back to a weight where an active, healthy lifestyle is possible, they might be able to maintain it. Because it isn't true that once you stop with the drug you will gain the weight back. That only happens if you eat it all back on. It doesn't just magically fly back to you.
What is needed is a holistic approach to weight loss therapy: get the drug, consult a nutritionist to help with a possible lack of education around food, and provide a psychological intervention to see if there is actually an addiction problem underneath all that flab. Done like that, it can actually be a good thing for patient and insurance alike.
Weight loss is only one aspect. Diabetes is the other. Its actually cost effective in the long run for lessening the long term compounded health problems that result from diabetes being unmanaged, or even only partially managed.
Some people in the comments are mad about people using this drug as an "easy way out", but they're too simple-minded to understand the consequences that this standard is setting. If you're willing to allow them to get away with abusing the system when it comes to weight loss medicines, then you're setting us up to lose the battle once there is a medication to manage/cure things like ALS, cancer, autoimmune disease, etc.
We need to end drug advertising in this country as well. How much do they spend on that?
Billions wit a Capital B.
Ask your doctor about OBDex today...
Much less than on stock buybacks.
drug advertising at least allows some of the profits to be dispersed to other industries.
It isn't a healthcare system. When I went to the hospital to find a doc and get set up they handed me a book of papers for me to fill out. I tossed it back on the desk and told them I'd rather just die.
I even have insurance. I just can't use it without writing a book.
From what the nurses were saying everything they do is geared toward getting people to go through the emergncy room so they can charge way more money.
This industry should be socialized.
Can you explain what you had to fill out that was so expansive? And all the years I've had various insurances I've never had to fill out a book level of forms.
Careful what you wish for…
I was actually on the side of the pharmaceutical company until they said the US Government doesn’t have the power to negotiate prices. That’s just completely insane.
Congress did that. Congress is bought by their major campaign donors.
And it's just not true. Of course they have that power. All it would need for them is to say: no, we won't have insurances pay for that drug. It's the simplest thing. They WANT to be powerless.
The fact the most powerful government in the world won't let itself negotiate prices on drugs it's paying for is mind boggling until you remember abuch of politicians and government officials are on the payroll in an almost certainly under the table kind of way
The Canadian government negotiate our drug prices.
You cannot improve the long-term quality of your health through drug-based weight loss without adjusting the foods you eat, beverages you drink and activity levels. In 2021, I declined weight loss surgery and weight loss drugs. I gave up added sugar, stop eating ultra processed foods, adopted a low carb Mediterranean diet and limited myself to two meals a day. I’ve lost 90 pounds and have continued to lose weight over the past two years. My blood tests, urine tests and blood pressure are in reference ranges across all factors. I reversed pre-diabetes, cured non-alcohol fatty liver and cured my metabolic disease. What I have done is what all patients on weight loss drugs and weight loss surgeries are supposed to do in addition to their course of medical intervention. It wasn’t easy. It required me to dramatically change what I put in my shopping cart and to reduce how often I eat at restaurants. I saved myself and my health insurer tens of thousands of dollars for treatments whose results do not last without changes in diet and lifestyle. If I can do it, anyone can. I’m a senior citizen. It’s never too late.
The "if I can do it, anyone can" is nonsense. Taking away sugary drinks and bad food for some people amounts to taking the only joy out of their lives. Now, I know that a lot about what "joy in life" actually is is a matter of perception, and perception can be altered. But that is not a quick and easy thing to do. You have changed, probably because you realized your lifestyle is killing you. Not everyone feels that living is worth the effort, and a lot more will only change when the realization of their life-threatening habits is immediately upon them.
I agree with you 100% I have hypothyroidism and even though I have to work twice as hard to take the weight off I would rather do the work than take an rx. Way to go btw I have lost like 75ibs in 2 years. ❤
@@VolkbrechtThese rx work by slowing your digestion and in some cases stoping it all together its called gastroparesis if your interested. It is not safe.
@@compendiumyo3358 If fat people were rational, they wouldn't be fat. Of course these drugs have side effects. The main mechanism you have outlined sounds suspiciously like it could promote stomach and/or intestinal cancer in the long run, aside from all the stuff that is known. But for people who can't bring themselves to not want to overindulge in unhealthy foods a drug that will take that decision from them is rather appealing, don't you think?
@@Volkbrecht You are incorrect.
The fact that people are that lazy and have no self control is insane. They would rather take a expensive drug the rest of their lives instead of diet and exercise..... interesting.
The US is one of 2 countries with advertisements for prescription medications. Advertisements have 2 parts, 1 Commercials - which fundamentally corrupts the media, and the larger portion are directed at doctors - the 2nd part caused the Opioid Crisis. With out advertisements for prescription medications the US would likely have avoided the Opioid Crisis and been able to more properly punish the mega corporations that caused it.
I was 6 years old when the news pushed the story about a non-addictive opiate. At 6 I was familiar enough with the saying "opiate of the masses" to have asked what an opiate is. At 6 years old I knew the story made NO SENSE... Thats all I have to say about that....
The commercials drive me crazy
Here, in the Netherlands, health insurance is mandatory. Basic insurance costs between €130 and €150 per month. People on benefits or on a low wage receive a monthly healthcare allowance from the government. The poorest people living at or below the poverty line will receive the full amount. The higher your income, the less healthcare allowance you will receive.
The prices of the same medicines are many times cheaper here than in the United States, because the national government negotiates hard about this. And here's what the government has to say about it:
"The Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) wants more insight into the cost structure of expensive medicines. Society has the right to know where the money from the health care premium goes."
We have a fairly large government with a lot of civil servants. We grumble a lot about them and they cost a lot of money, but they get a lot done and I, as a citizen, am extremely grateful for that!
"Fast forward to skinny-ville" yeah i wouldve stopped listening to her right then and there
I stopped drinking Pepsi and coke. I cut out almost all sugars, and most starch from my diet. I put my blood sugar back under control and lowered my grocery bill dramatically. I am not on medication.
Same! Cut out sugar unnecessary carbs. Stabilized blood sugar. No more spikes, reduced hunger and eliminated chronic joint and soft tissue pain… Sugar is pure evil.
Keep in mind this is not for all diabetics. It's for type 2 which is much more easily controlled with diet and exercise. That's free. So, eat better and be active, then there will be very few who actually NEED this. Educate yourselves folks.
The affordable care act didn't include obesity coverage (and manner others) as a mandated benefit. This led to 90% of them not covering it at all, or, in he cases where it is covered, they require genetic testing to prove it's not your own fault (the testing is usually noncovered.)
The AAC is a joke. You'd have to pay $8,000 or $9,000 up front before it would even pretend to start coverage.
@@VernCrisler That's the plan, not the ACA. The ACA mandated coverage but didn't put a cap on deductibles. Everyone that was too sick to insure before were now charging millions to every insurance that would have denied them before (preexisting conditions.)
So what the ACA accomplished was essentially spreading out that debt to (not everyone) the poor people who can only afford high deductible plans. Now it's just the poor people paying for socialized medicine that they can't afford to use themselves.
Why should the taxpayer pay for drugs for a condition that is a lifestyle choice?
@@Laotzu.Goldbug It's not though, necessarily, is it? It's cheaper to eat at fast food than to grocery shop, in my area. Wages weren't rising with inflation since the 70's and the recent inflation made that even harder on people. You could blame them before, at least partially, in most areas of the country, but now? not so much. They are being priced out of even fruit and veg my guy.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug To add to that, we are going to pay for treating the poor badly with our taxes, one way or another. Even if we don't pay for those drugs, we will pay for their medical care which rapidly increases in expensive, interventionary medicine as they plummet to their deaths in hospital beds. We will pay for it in additional supply costs as health issues go unaddressed, simply because they can't afford to live a healthy lifestyle with good food and doctor visits. We will pay for it as people are hewn from families with their deaths, creating voids in the cohesion of a family unit, leading to more poor outcomes and less stable opportunities. You may think you're apart from this now but it will catch up with us all and wildly imbalanced inequality is to blame for every penny lost.
My endocrinologist prescribed Ozempic and then Mounjaro, hoping to increase the dosage of the latter and in tandem, decrease the Glipizide I've been taking.
Unfortunately, the pharmacist has been unable to fill my prescriptions of either of those on time, causing me to miss a dose in between refills, or one out of every five doses I was supposed to be taking.
And the last time, my refill was on backorder for over three weeks, until they canceled it. So my endocrinologist re-did my Mounjaro prescription for the lowest dose, which was available, and bumped my Glipizide back up - basically reversing all the progress she was trying to make over the past year.
If you are type 2 diabetic there are so many things you can do..low carb diet..walk 10 minutes after each meal so your muscles can use the carbs..weight lift 3 to 4 times a week and walk walk walk stay active...some people use intermittent fasting as a tool as well
@@jeaninesilva5055 why do things that world require effort when you can just pop a pill or take an injection.
Why aren’t you using insulin? Exercise ,eliminate processed foods especially carbs, eat more vegetables and you won’t need these new GLP agonists. Lifestyle modifications work. People don’t trust vaccines but they will inject themselves with highly suspect peptides without fear.
I would also like to point out that if you get your Healthcare insurance through your job then your prescriptions may be covered separately from your overall Healthcare insurance which, for some reason, might not be communicated to you until you go to get an expensive prescription that you need right away and you find out you have no idea what your prescription insurance is. So you pay out of pocket and then you go to your company website to find out what it is and can't really find anything and it's not listed with your medical insurance because it's a completely different company and it's just saying buy at CVS? Like what? CVS Caremark? A pharmacy can't be insurance, too, that would obviously be against monopoly laws. Except, no wait. It is 😑
I legit thought that I just didn't have prescription insurance anymore because I had an HSA. The pharmacists kept insisting it had to exist. I paid out of pocket for almost a year before I somehow stumbled upon the right cheat code for connecting my CVS Caremark account with my CVS account (they're completely separate logins) and insurance started covering part of the cost. I still don't know how it's paid for because it's not mentioned in my benefits page. Vision and dental are also different insurances. I don't f*ck with my HSA (health savings account) because I want it as extra retirement money. One year I got an FSA (flexible savings account) so I could buy glasses tax-free, but that was a different banking account from my HSA and neither are accounts I have with banks for my personal banking. You need a f*cking college course to understand this sh*t
But it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. (It's f*cked)
I feel like the FSA was not explained well to you if you had both an HSA and an FSA at once. FSA’s are a separate account of tax free money set aside to pay for prescriptions, glasses, copays, etc. You should either receive a debit-like card for use when paying for these items or a login to file claims with your FSA. Many employers offer FSAs for anyone participating in their insurance whereas only people with a high-deductible insurance can get an HSA as there are different rules on things like yearly rollover (FSAs typically don’t) and employer matching.
@@somenerdyblonde Me: explains how complicated and non-intuitive American health care is
You: Hey, I don't think you fully understood HSA and FSAs
😑
So thanks for reinforcing my point but a) I did have that info and b) you're not quite correct. There are contribution limits to both HSAs and FSAs with tax penalties if you exceed them. If you have both an HSA and a LPFSA (limited purpose FSA or FSAs that are HSA friendly), you essentially double the amount of tax-free medical expenditures you can have in a year. I really didn't need it for what I used it for, so I only had it the first year to purchase glasses. It's also convenient to use a LPFSA if you're using your HSA for bonus retirement funds (a thing I explained in my original comment) and don't want to touch it which is how I treat my HSA. I'd have to be real stupid to miss the two separate cards and accounts I was given
I’ve learned employer covered healthcare is practically worthless. Would do anything when I was hit by a car while running. Wouldn’t even pay for the bloody tetanus shot. Let alone any of the actual “care” I got. Let’s be real they just cleaned the blood and trying to wash the skid marks off my body and told me to suck it up. But that cost a shit ton of money…what does my $250 insurance cover? Apparently nothing…
Well said, well presented
healthy diet and lifestyle is still the best option, don't be 'sacklered' into buying these drugs
2:00 I think I know the punch-line:
Pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than R&D.
---
Edit: Coming from Canada I had no idea that the US government was not allowed to negotiate prices. Whichever lobbyist wrote that law probably got a nice bonus.
Thats why the rich do not want us woke.If you asleep or to stupit you gona get riped of .
I was on the Tirzepitide/Mounjaro study. My A1C dropped 2 points, and I lost 50 pounds. The side effects were minimal. After the study, before Mounjaro was approved, I was on Ozempic and suffered from several side effects, including gall bladder issues. I was so pleased when Mounjaro came out, got a prescription, and discovered even my insurance won't cover it. Ain't the American health system great?😡
I lost 130 pounds in 10 months using a whole food plant exclusive diet. When I started I was taking 23 medications and had many illnesses including Type II diabetes. Reversed all illnesses, take 0 medications and I have kept the weight off 11 years. So I’m not willing to pay more for insurance just because people want these drugs.
@@doctork1708 For real, I don't understand why people don't just eat healthier.
I recently gave some greens from a friend's garden to my neighbor, who's a grandmother. She gave me some spaghetti & meat sauce in exchange.
She mentioned how she went to a church thing recently and was surprised to see spinach in the pasta.
I told her, yea you can put anything you want in pasta sauce, I usually saute a bunch of different vegetables with it. She seemed incredulous, the only thing she's ever seen in pasta sauce is meat & cheese.
Americans are so ignorant when it comes to food, it's crazy. Everyone would rather pay $10k for a fat pill than learn how to eat a healthy diet.
why didnt you just eat less
@doctork1708 right. Tell me you have 0 clue about the disease of obesity without telling me. Great that you could do it and maintain without meds. For those who can't, they need the meds. For life. Just like the folks with chronic high bp and cholesterol.
@@robertusga natural selection
Oddly enough. I was asked a year ago by my primary doctor if i wanted to take it. I am diabetic and because of my hypothyroid and various other medications i'm on, i have a very difficult time losing weight. I believed her that it was safe, but i brought up the fact that i didn't want to go on something that i wouldn't be able to get off of. I had gotten my sugars and weight under control so it wasn't completely necessary. Watching this, I'm glad i never decided to take it.
I'm totally uneducated about this subject. I'm just curious: how comes that there is no long term benefits when people could use such a drug as an opportunity for getting to a stably lower body mass amd change their eating habits for the better? Is there any chemical reason that would leqd people back to their old eating habits as soon as they're off the drug?
@al8-.W people who rely on a drug to help them lose weight often become dependent on it. Once they go off of it, they lose any impulse control and often end up putting on more weight than they stared with. Also, with some of these drugs, your body's natural systems also slow down productivity because they have depended on another chemical introduced to the body to regulate it. It is certainly beneficial if your weight has gotten out of hand, or you can't control insulin levels. For me, however, I thought it would be better to deal with without medical intervention.
I benefited greatly from this med...just went off it, blood sugar shot up and very severe cold turkey drug withdrawals. Wieght is up about 3 lbs. Drug price to me went up 7 TIMES!
I got lucky, with my insurance I only pay $25 for it
Me too😊
If only there was a different solution to obesity that involved not spending money, like having a decent job that doesn't involve 80 hours a week in a chair, having to eat garbage because everything else takes time or money you don't have.
It's not just that, people's mentality has already been set to instant gratification, I've been drinking both forms of kefir for almost a year. I've tried telling people about it but some just don't have time or simply refuse to even try it as if they have given up on everything but medications.
@@squidward5110 Well, I'll just hop in my wheelchair, magically control the weather so I can go outside, magically control every other person around me so no one aggravates my insanely fragile health condition, leaving me in bed for days or sometimes weeks, and then magically levitate my way around the kitchen with energy I never have and coordination I don't have to cook a meal I probably won't be able to even eat due to extreme dietary restrictions. Yep, I'll be skinny in no time with all this magical nonsense on my side.
@@squidward5110 check your privilege
this makes me sick a company charging people $15,000 a year to use a drunk THEY MUST TAKE FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. This is ethicly wrong on so many levels.
Not at all. dont want to pay? dont take the drug. You arent entitled to anything kid. You clearly dont understand ethics at all.
To play devil’s advocate, would you rather the drug cost next to nothing and have people forgo adopting a healthy diet because they just get a shot instead. Even that seems unethical.
@@Typhoonbladefist How would that be unethical? people choosing to eat what they desire and using science to avoid the down side is not 'unethical' its just smart.
@@Typhoonbladefist Access to weight loss measures is not a driver of poor diet or sedentary lifestyles.
What's unethical is that obese folks would be best served learning how to eat properly and learn how to cook well.
We do not have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system. We started down this path when they start allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise. Drug costs skyrocketed after the start of the happen, and then you had an ignorant public demanding this drug or that drug from doctors. We also failed to have a single pair system of some sort like all other modern countries. And like every facet of our society, we have lead corporations not only control their industry but also our government. That only that politics and politicians have made wedge issues of healthcare, and mainly southern states have Pastor Conan laws that don’t respect medical decisions by professional doctors. Southern states have some of the worst health outcomes in the world. We no longer have a republic. Welcome to the Oligarchy of these disunited states.
I say if you cant learn to just not eat, than pay the high prices of having to take a drug instead of implementing discipline.
When a drug comes along claiming to help people lose weight but you need to diet and exercise for it to work shouldn't you be sceptical. If a wanted a weight loss drug i want it to work when i'm laying on the couch for two weeks
Exactly or speed up the metabolism or something.
Our Healthcare system is already broken
If the government paid for the R&D, then the government should own all of the research results and related patents.
Just imagine if the fire department worked like US healthcare. Fire insurance would be an entirely different thing. When you called 911 the first question would be who's your fire insurance provider. And guess what. There was a time that's how fire departments worked. At the beginning of the last century fire department were a subscription service.
In some states, that is still the case. Louisiana, for example, you have to regularly pay to have the option to have fire fighting services assist you. Ridiculous.
Yes, it is so much better when the government control everything. You really need to inject some common sense and learn about history before you try to take all of us down that route. Pure stupidity.
They’d be cheaper if it was subscription based. Adding a government middle man does NOT I assure you make things cheaper 😂😂. There’s probably like 3-4 house fires a month in my city of 65k. It wouldn’t cost much. Call it $39/month to the fire station. That’d be 30 million in revenue a year. Think they could operate on that? Me too. Now that the governments involved lord knows how much wasted money is there. And I’ll bet 30 cents on the dollar goes to administration.
Did you just imply that private insurance middle man is cheaper than government as a middle man? Since the subject of the video is healthcare, nearly every developed country will prove you wrong.
@@CakebatteredHe's a good little brainwashed sheep that bought into the Corporation talking point that Government will cost more when been proven by Medicare that it is way less overhead than Insurance companies taking their 35% right off the top.
Good news! Liraglutide, the same class of medication as Monjaro, Ozempic, etc. is going generic this next year which will make it so much cheaper as no GLP-1 med is generic currently.
Excellent. That would be a daily dose of GLP-1 activator. Hope there's no shortages...
Someone will tweak the formula somewhere to keep that patent going, or they’ll the the same as that evil pod did with insulin by buying the rights to it and driving up the price. I’ll watch.
Excellent video really informative.
Why does there always seem to be a limited budget for medical care but not for foreign aid or war efforts? Isn’t medical care equally as profitable?
Down with greed, Down with corruption. Hold everyone accountable.
These evil people make people sick and up charge Medical practices, vile evil people. Disgusting
It’s a dang miracle for me. Completely changed my life. My sugar levels are perfect and I’ve lost 20 pounds within 3 months. No more headaches or sweating. I’m so thankful!
It made me sick, felt like I was rotting on the inside. Hated sticking myself, feeling bad for 4 days a week. Gave it up.
That what most of the poison these quaks give us do to us .At why every bodys going around sickly.
Sorry. Some say it may be the injection site that might be associated with side-effects. Others say it may be certain types of food you're eating. I don't think we'll know for sure until the companies do full scale testing for side effects. Maybe you could try Rybelsus?
I've been prescribed Maunjaro at 15mg, the highest dosage, and it has been unavailable on 3 occasions.
On 2 of those occasions it was unavailable for over a month. All of this because people are getting Maunjaro prescribed off label for weight loss.
I have an appointment with my doctor to see if he can prescribe a lower dosage for me to take twice as much of but it seems unlikely that my insurance will cover that because of the cost and there is no guarantee that any dosage will be available at any given time
That's why I like living in Thailand part time. Pretty much every drug we have in America has been copied by Indian pharmaceutical companies whi don't care about copyright laws and you can buy high-quality versions of our pharmaceuticals for 98% less of the price.
The government may not be able to set prices for drugs, but what they can do is 1. Increase taxes on profits by defining a luxury drug bracket (companies will be desperate to avoid getting into that bracket) 2. Reduce the patent time for new drugs.
They can. They choose not to. The government is beholden to corporations in America. Nothing new.
i think a reasonable way of setting a price would be to audit the price other insurance companies purchase it for and just take an average of that. this would be a way to not have the govt negotiate the price directly and just use the market rate.
As long as bribing (lobbying) is legal nothing will change for the better
"We're basically letting the pharmaceutical companies set the prices." That's like letting your kids set the amount of candy they can have.
Kids generally don’t make the candy they are allowed to have. So no.
@@bate01071Missing the point speedrun (Any%)
Or your teen daughter decide when and how late she can go out…recipe for disaster.
As a diabetic who actually needs to take this to regulate my blood sugar, the shortages caused by off brand prescriptions strictly for weight loss are extremely aggravating. It's hard to fill my Rx sometimes. The weight loss side effects is nice, but I kind of wish it didn't do that.
Even if there weren't any shortages of prescription medications the pharmaceutical companies will still make us pay the same amount of money. The cost of drugs is a really big threat to the USA national security and other nations.
You mean off label, off brand would be if there were generics increasing supply and decreasing costs.
I feel for you, I do. But obesity is just as much an issue as diabetes is. And it's the driving force to my quest, I don't want to become diabetic.
So much cheaper to eat real food and get a little exercise. Just get a dog and walk them daily. In between eat some minimally processed foods.
So we should allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices (DUH!) and/or not approve these drugs for weight loss other than in "extreme" cases. Now we can try to figure out what "extreme" means. Seriously, it's ridiculous that the government can't negotiate drug prices.
Yep you can thank old George W. Jr. For that one
So, no administration has created any legislation, or amended any existing rules to medical administrations since GWB? 0bama was completely unable to radically change the system when his signature program was rammed through? If it was so bad, why didn't he change it?
or fat poor people can eat less... that would be to easy tho
@@juanshaftpatel7488 You seem to have little understanding of how it all works.
@@juanshaftpatel7488 That's true but I still would like the government to be able to negotiate drug prices.
Remember Martin Shkreli? He was selling Daraprim for $750 per pill. A drug that a high school class mimicked for $2 per pill.
The entire industry is like that. Without negotiation, they will charge 200x+ the manufacturing cost, because they can.
It would be interesting to know why non-American pharmaceutical companies like Novo Nordisk isn’t just outcompeting Eli Lilly?
Is there some tax on imported pharmaceuticals to keep prices high?
This is so disingenuous. No, you dont need to take the drug(s) forever.
If people upon losing their goal weight were to eat the correct amount of calories to sustain that weight and no more, they would not magically create matter on their person.
The saddest part is that a drug like this even has to exist in lieu of proper education of healthy diet and exercise.
I used this for 3 months. Had to pay out of pocket. Could only afford it for 3 months. About 1350.00 a month.
Wiped out my HSA.
But it worked.
What are you going to do after that 3 month supplies is used?
So interesting how drug names are given. Mounjaro is obviously supposed to sound like a mountain, to give the air of being adventurous and active. Moun resembles mount(ain) and Jaro like the end of Killamonjaro
This drug was manufactured for people with diabetes,it was not manufactured for people to loose weight. Now the problem here in Australia is diabetics were having trouble getting this medication because all the obese people were using it to loose weight. Our medical system put a stop to people getting it to loose weight after about a year ! Now only diabetics can get prescribed ozempic here in Australia and about time too. If you want to loose weight start eating properly and exercise more,you shouldn’t be using a diabetic drug that a lot of diabetics need to regulate their blood sugar levels. Lifestyle change is what is needed for obese people not diabetic drugs.
One thing you forgot to mention is that the US taxpayer bankrolls a lot of research behind these drugs.
How can it break something that’s already broken?
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I Hope they pass legislation that has our government setting drug prices. We can create mechanisms to reward teams and companies for R&D and discovery, and keep those separated from the price setting so we don’t end up with people that are sick or dying not receiving beneficial treatment from a pill that might cost $1 to produce..but is priced at $1000 due to a patent.
The R&D is mostly done at universities that are taxpayer funded, and then the patent is sold for cheap to a company so they can maximise the profits. Which is of course why it's so expensive. They bought the patent to make it expensive.
So I don't think the last part of your solution would change much.
or fat poor people can eat less... that would be to easy tho
The law makers have been getting a lot of money from the drug companies.
Also, Chuck Grassley holding business accountable is one of the most laughable things I've witnessed. He doesn't want to be there, his fellow Senator had to have twisted his arm.
If the public invests in r&d they should be able to aggressively negotiate on their future purchases, or demand similar returns to those private sector investors on the same product.
Obesity mainly comes from high glycemic carbohydrate diet and high caloric intake. Take the drug to lose the weight and start a keto diet to keep the weight off.
Before bariatric surgery i used to come out of pocket for my diabetic meds because it ended up being cheaper. Found out when i broke my last vial and ran out to grab more at a Walmart rx instead of calling/ waiting for my doc office. Was blown away my insurance not only came out of my check but also was costing me more in meds