Live data from Hacker News

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

independent.co.uk

151–160 of 301 posts

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

#151

I understand that $25 may have been an introductory loss leader but $1k seems insane and short sighted given the size of the market this drug potentially has.

Its not a loss leader.

$25 was the patient support program for diabetes. That still exists.

The drug isnt approved for obesity, so they dont get access to the program. Its actually illegal for the company.

This is a case of the company stopping people from doing something they shouldnt have been doing in the first place.

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

#152
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they the solution to obesity? I'm curious as to whether the weight stays off long term. 10 or more years at least or else it's just another bandaid. What we need is better access to nutritious food that doesn't take up so much of folk's scant downtime and tight income. I understand there's lots of reasons people are obese that aren't just laziness, but the drug doesn't solve those either. They're still not gettin…

Depressed people take ssri’s their entire life. People with ADHD take adderal or the like. I don’t see any reason to think of obesity as a different type of disease. Some people just find it extremely difficult to keep off weight, it doesn’t matter what kind of food they’re eating. Yes they could eat less, just like I could keep my thermostat at 45 in the winter to save on my heating bill. But that’s not a realistic…

If the weight stays off even after 10 years on the drug, then that's great in my book. Nicotine, caffeine, and bariatric surgery all reduce your appetite in the short run, but your body eventually adapts and your weight starts climbing again. Until we've got more than a couple years of data, I'm not holding out hope that this drug won't eventually lose its punch for maintaining a lower weight.

The main problem to my mind is that cheap, easy, accessible foods are high in both fat and carbs. Fat is satiating, but super calorie dense. Carbs are less calorie dense, but spike your blood sugar. After your blood sugar levels drop, your body signals that you're hungry again in spite of the fact that you've eaten plenty of calories. So now you're starving again and you've surpassed the number of calories you can reasonably utilize without storing it as fat. Add in the fact that evolution hasn't even begun to catch up with the current situation where calories are not a scarce resource (in the US and similar countries) and your body is screaming to eat while the eating's good. This causes you to comsume way too many calories and nowhere near enough vitamins and minerals.

It's a lot of work to eat right anymore. You're working 40 hours a week if you're lucky, you're exhausted and feel like shit and you may not even be able to afford what you need to be eating to maintain a healthy weight.

And, just to make things more fun, there's 1000 sources telling you 1000 different things about what you should and shouldn't eat to be healthy. Cholesterol is bad for you - wait, no it isn't. Eat whole grains. No, don't, that's sugar! Eat fruit. Oh no, fruit is basically all sugar. No it isn't, it's full of fiber and that cancels out the sugar. Don't eat fats, except unsaturated fats, but those are calorie dense. Vegetable oil is unsaturated, but that's bad for you too in a different way.

It's damn frustrating. If it were as easy as just eating less, no one would be obese. Back to the point of the article, however, I don't think it's as simple as taking a magic pill. How many miracle weight loss drugs have come and gone over the last decade? I'm not holding my breath that this is the one that will turn out to work forever with no severe downsides.

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

#153

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/semaglutidonomics These new weight loss medications are the solution to obesity. Imo this is one of the biggest medical advances of the century and at least in urban areas of wealthy countries, I don’t think we’ll see obese people anymore in 10 years. The pharma companies realized they’ve got something truly revolutionary so they took the old tried and true drug dealer strategy.…

The solution to obesity is a lifestyle change, or dealing with the underlying (psychological) problems. I'm all for aiding people in their lifestyle changes, through medicine or other means, but there is no drug that can fix obesity. Medicating obesity is like taking pills to make smoking healthy.

This is just the next step in the ultimate dream, losing weight without putting in effort necessary. If you need to keep taking pills to keep your healthy weight, you're just suppressing symptoms of something bigger.

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

#154
post #36

Mounjaro is not an obesity drug. It's a type 2 diabetes drug. Do not call it an obesity drug. The headline is editorialized. The linked article's headline: The ‘next Ozempic’ became a social media sensation. Then everything changed The coupon didn't go away. The coupon's terms changed. I'm using the coupon now. Because I have type 2 diabetes. The coupon changed because people were using it to get the drug for off-lab…

I'm aware that you're upset because of shortages in the medicine you need. I think your beef should be with the pharma company seeking to maximize profits by constraining supply such that they are easily overwhelmed by off-label use, not with people seeking effective medical treatment. There's a common meme among what I've seen from diabetics complaining about the shortages: that this is a tik-tok thing, or prompted…

>Doctors are prescribing this for people who have medical conditions that make them dramatically overweight

I know multiple people < 150 lbs who have gotten scrips for it with no history of diabetes.

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

#155
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take Mounjaro. For obesity. I thought back in '05 when I first started learning about DPP-4 inhibitors it wouldn't be too long before we realized obesity/T2DM were aspects of the same whole, but it'd take decades before we got to an effective therapy. This is pretty much it. Zero side effects (other than the side effects from losing weight too fast, still have to pay attention to diet). We'll see if there's long te…

Surely eating healthier and exercising costs less than $12k a year right?

…no? Exercising 2h/week (close to the minimum) costs 100 hours per year, at $100/hr that’s close to 10k already and that doesn’t include the attention cost, or anything to do with diet

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

#157
post #36

Mounjaro is not an obesity drug. It's a type 2 diabetes drug. Do not call it an obesity drug. The headline is editorialized. The linked article's headline: The ‘next Ozempic’ became a social media sensation. Then everything changed The coupon didn't go away. The coupon's terms changed. I'm using the coupon now. Because I have type 2 diabetes. The coupon changed because people were using it to get the drug for off-lab…

I feel like you're splitting hairs. The intended purpose of GLP-1 drugs is to improve A1C in existing diabetic patients. Weight loss is directly correlated with that, because if your body is properly expending glucose, then the excess will not be stored as fat, or sit around in your blood stream in the case of diabetics.

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

#158
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem using these drugs for weight loss is they need to be used as part of a program that also includes making lifestyle changes. If you don't push the changes and just do things to your limits, when you stop the drug, your unchanged habits make you gain the weight back. This is one of the biggest things people with obesity struggle with. This is seen as a miracle cure for obesity because it doesn't req…

I take Wegovy for obesity, and it completely changes my behaviour. I don't often think about food any more, and when I do, I am quite happy preparing a small amount of healthy food. Not only that, I have more energy so I maintain a far more active lifestyle. Given that I can go for months without those "bad habits", but if I stop taking it they come back, I think they're more than habits. Habits break if you stop doi…

One of the dramatic effects I’ve noticed is I finally know what being truly hungry feels like. I can differentiate between appetite and hunger. I used to think it was odd how people would turn down food when it’s offered to them. Either my hunger cues were so strong, or my lack of self control has made me absolutely unable to restrict my intake long enough to reduce my weight in a meaningful way. This drug is essentially turning down my hunger drive and now I get it when someone turns down food offered to them. It’s also given me control over what I eat since I don’t have those wild hunger pangs telling me to eat way too much or to eat the wrong thing. Feeling hungry was like this “emergency” that I had to resolve as quickly as possible.

I probably need to see a therapist that can help with my eating habits, and this has highlighted that for me.

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is not as a weight loss drug, but as a way to regulate diabetes. My girlfriend is on it, because the other medications don't work outside of insulin which has it's own difficulties. The sudden raise in price and her insurance refusing to pay for it means she either has to do it out of pocket or try and switch to something else which may or may not work. The real problem with using it as a weight loss…

> Eat too much and you get sick (seriously like 2 bites and you're done eating). While I’ve know some people experience more severe GI issues or nausea with the drug, this is quite the exaggeration. A drug that made it difficult or impossible to actually consume enough food to survive (more than “two bites”) would be wildly unsafe to prescribe.

The first three days were like this.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is not as a weight loss drug, but as a way to regulate diabetes. My girlfriend is on it, because the other medications don't work outside of insulin which has it's own difficulties. The sudden raise in price and her insurance refusing to pay for it means she either has to do it out of pocket or try and switch to something else which may or may not work. The real problem with using it as a weight loss…

> Eat too much and you get sick (seriously like 2 bites and you're done eating). While I’ve know some people experience more severe GI issues or nausea with the drug, this is quite the exaggeration. A drug that made it difficult or impossible to actually consume enough food to survive (more than “two bites”) would be wildly unsafe to prescribe.

This is not an exaggeration for my wife. For a full day after taking her weekly shot, she eats about 2 bites per meal.
Post reply on HN