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Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

independent.co.uk

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Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#121

Post by alyandon »

moneywoes wrote: post #42
alyandon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely insane what insurance companies will actually pay for - mine was fulling willing to pay $1250 for a simple ultrasound procedure at a hospital facility vs $150 at a specialty clinic. I made the smart decision to have it done at the clinic but it isn't like I'm going to be rewarded for that decision by paying lower premiums.

How do find these prices

The hard way - I looked up the average price for the procedure and pestered them for up front pricing. When they told me what they were going to charge I walked out of the facility without another word and went to the local clinic.

I also let my doctor know that I was extremely displeased about his referral to that facility when there were cheaper alternatives.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#122

Post by lm28469 »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #117
lm28469 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t see any reason to think of obesity as a different type of disease. Because it's man made and completely avoidable. Look at tobacco for example, it was the exact same thing until it wasn't because we woke up and decided to act on the issue Helping currently obese people to get out of the loop is good, breaking the system we built that make more and more people obese would be better. Also, being obese is only…

> breaking the system we built that make more and more people obese would be better. The system exists because people like it. I don't think it's possible to break it at this point considering how people normally react to having their life made worse. You can't stop people from eating what they want, but these drugs make it possible to change what they want.

> You can't stop people from eating what they want,

You can certainly stop advertising junk food to kids, that would be a good start. You can also regulate things you know, like not having your entire daily sugar requirement in a single can of soda

Btw if you still eat the same garbage you'll still absolutely wreck your body, obese or not, you'll need a diabetes pill, a cardiovascular disease pill, a blood pressure pill, a kidney boosting pill, &c. You are what you eat, quite literally.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#123

Post by pwinnski »

zarzavat wrote: post #60
Retric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t explain why the rate of obesity has increased so dramatically over just a few decades. Like most widespread changes there are many root causes simply producing a massive surplus of food being an obvious requirement. If you’re selling food, getting people to consume more is simply more profitable. Various mechanisms kick in after someone gains weight to maintain that weight. Which is why the drug mentione…

"Choose" is the wrong word but you can certainly decide to change your weight, just as you can decide to give up smoking. It's hard to give up an addiction, and yes the companies peddling the addiction as an avenue to profit need to face a reckoning. But at the individual level, we can all choose what weight we want to be. Fatalism doesn't help anyone.

This is ignorant of decades of research and the effectiveness of hormone-manipulating drugs like the one under discussion.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#124

Post by pwinnski »

Retric wrote: post #28
kingstoned wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That doesn’t explain why the rate of obesity has increased so dramatically over just a few decades. Like most widespread changes there are many root causes simply producing a massive surplus of food being an obvious requirement. If you’re selling food, getting people to consume more is simply more profitable. Various mechanisms kick in after someone gains weight to maintain that weight. Which is why the drug mentione…

With the exception of the Great Depression and the second world war, average weights have been increasing in the USA for more than a century. We talk about this as if it's a recent shift, because we finally went from being nearly-universally-underweight to nearly-universally-obese, but the increase is relatively steady and very long term.

It's also present in all wealthy countries. The US led the way by being wealthier earlier, but all countries that have wealth see a steady rise in average weight over time.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#125

Post by 29083011397778 »

Retric wrote: post #83
zarzavat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Choose" is the wrong word but you can certainly decide to change your weight, just as you can decide to give up smoking. It's hard to give up an addiction, and yes the companies peddling the addiction as an avenue to profit need to face a reckoning. But at the individual level, we can all choose what weight we want to be. Fatalism doesn't help anyone.

The statistics for long term ie 10+ year weight loss are abysmal. Only around 20% of people in random trials maintain 10+% weight reduction for even 1 year. People can very much choose to lose weight, but it seems odd to say most people are then “choosing” to gain weight again. That said willpower does seems to account for a small percentage of overall weight so it very much does play a role.

> The statistics for long term ie 10+ year weight loss are abysmal

Great - now do cigarettes. If you'd prefer to skip the math though, the CDC states "Fewer than one in ten adult cigarette smokers succeed in quitting each year".

I don't think it's completely unfair to compare quitting smoking with weight loss.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#126

Post by pwinnski »

fourseventy wrote: post #39

Pro tip, you can lose weight for free with no drugs at all.

Pro tip, you (some percentage of you) can (for some definition of can) lose weight for free (your mileage may vary) with no drugs at all.

The fact that these drugs exist and work demonstrates the hormonal link that decades of research has shown is there.

Also, the prices of healthy food is much higher than the prices of unhealthy food thanks to subsidies and scale. But that's secondary to the fact that many people actually can't just "eat less" the way others can.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#127

Post by falcolas »

nordsieck wrote: post #18
falcolas wrote: post #12

The company that gouges customers for life saving insulin (edit: not epipens) gouges customers for another life saving drug. Capitalism, ho! (If you accept that obesity kills, reducing obesity saves everyone’s money and lives)

> (If you accept that obesity kills, reducing obesity saves everyone’s money and lives) That seems like a ... strange argument. If that is a very poorly phrased way of saying that reducing obesity will extend peoples' working lives, that's certainly true. But otherwise, everyone dies in the end. Is it really that much more expensive to die as a middle aged overweight person than a healthy weight old person?

Yes. It's more expensive because of several issues that happen to obese people that don't happen to healthy weight people. Specifically dramatically increased inflammation of pretty much their entire body due to decomposing fat cells.

And those higher costs get socialized through insurance and taxes.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#128

Post by HDThoreaun »

lm28469 wrote: post #122
HDThoreaun wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> breaking the system we built that make more and more people obese would be better. The system exists because people like it. I don't think it's possible to break it at this point considering how people normally react to having their life made worse. You can't stop people from eating what they want, but these drugs make it possible to change what they want.

> You can't stop people from eating what they want, You can certainly stop advertising junk food to kids, that would be a good start. You can also regulate things you know, like not having your entire daily sugar requirement in a single can of soda Btw if you still eat the same garbage you'll still absolutely wreck your body, obese or not, you'll need a diabetes pill, a cardiovascular disease pill, a blood pressure p…

> You can also regulate things you know, like not having your entire daily sugar requirement in a single can of soda

This will never happen in the US. I wouldn't mind, by anyone who votes for this would be dead in the water politically.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#129

Post by Retric »

29083011397778 wrote: post #125
Retric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics for long term ie 10+ year weight loss are abysmal. Only around 20% of people in random trials maintain 10+% weight reduction for even 1 year. People can very much choose to lose weight, but it seems odd to say most people are then “choosing” to gain weight again. That said willpower does seems to account for a small percentage of overall weight so it very much does play a role.

> The statistics for long term ie 10+ year weight loss are abysmal Great - now do cigarettes. If you'd prefer to skip the math though, the CDC states "Fewer than one in ten adult cigarette smokers succeed in quitting each year". I don't think it's completely unfair to compare quitting smoking with weight loss.

That’s just the first year, only something like 2% of people who lose weight keep it off for 10 years.

People maintained weight loss for 1 year are simply much more likely to regain weight in the next year than people who quit smoking for 1 year are likely to start smoking again over the next year and that trend stays consistent over time.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#130

Post by Retric »

lm28469 wrote: post #103
HDThoreaun wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t suddenly have less self control. Of course you could lose weight by eating less than your body urges you too. That has nothing to do with why more people are obese now though.

> People don’t suddenly have less self control. That's what we get after decades and decades of marketing targeting kids... large scale behaviour changes. Look at how tobacco was advertised, it was the same thing, now most of us know smoking is very detrimental to your health and addictive. I wonder when people will realise they're pulling the same shit for food

Again, most people who gained weight were adults. Someone who was 18 in 1975 is only 66 today.

Young kids are more likely to be obese but it’s only 22.2% for 12 - 19 year olds vs 44.3% among adults aged 40 to 59.

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