The Hollow Men of Hims • Hacker News Board

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#61

Post by nijave » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:40 AM UTC

leoh wrote: post #3

>What happened in those eight weeks reveals something essential about the kind of company Hims has become. Even as they shook hands with Novo executives in April 2025—presumably in a conference room with aggressively modern furniture—Hims continued selling what their new partner called "illegitimate, knockoff versions" of Wegovy. These were compounded semaglutide injections sourced, according to Novo's investigation,…

>What?

Yeah, that's quite a stretch of comparison...

Questionable quality control vs brazen fraud

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#62

Post by hunter-gatherer » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:41 AM UTC

cjbgkagh wrote: post #54

ggm-at-algebras wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unsure why you have been down voted because fundamentally your point is correct. Health is a fully regulated space, and no entity should be supplying medical products without adherence to requirements appropriate to their role. Compounding GLP-1 seems to me to be in the higher bar space.

I owe my health to gray market peptides, and for that reason and others I’m very happy they are available. Also recombinant DNA processes for making these meds is pretty mature tech it’s not like some crazy trade secret.

Can you expound on your use of peptides? My nephew was diagnised with crohns at the age of 10, but they now figure he was being mistreated when symptoms started at age 4. He is somehow still alive, but there have been significant developmental problems due to crohns and an overuse of steroids and other weird medications in his treatments.

His parents have been doing IV infusions for the past two years, which seem to be having more of a positive impact than anything the health care system did, and now they are about to start peptide therapy, which is something I know little about.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#63

Post by hammock » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:42 AM UTC

bickfordb wrote: post #36

Spooky23 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your position is simple: where does it come from? The legit path for compounded semaglutide is buying up Rybelsus, impacting the supply for diabetics. Compounding pharmacies are notoriously shady, and are likely using grey market materials from questionable sources.

Is there evidence that compounded Semaglutide from Hims pharmacies has harmed anyone?

Safe and effective. Side effects are very rare and are usually limited to soreness at the site of injection. Recommend everyone who is recommended semaglutide by a relevant authority, to get it. The obesity epidemic is a national security concern

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#64

Post by genocidicbunny » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:43 AM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #55

alphazard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and medical care should not be like Amazon prime. Speak for yourself; that is exactly what I want. And anyone else who wants a similar experience should be able to purchase it.

I don't think it will take more than 5 teenage overdose deaths to get most Americans to disagree.

Opposite those ODs you have thousands of people spending an arm and a leg on medicine that truly improves their lives, with no ill effect to them.

The way I see it, services like Hims are forcing a discussion that needs to have happened a long time ago. If people are willing to rely on them for medicines that can have some pretty serious side effects, what does that say about our existing system that people are eschewing? When you're asking people to choose between being able to afford to eat, and being able to afford something like insulin, why the fuck would you expect the decision making process to be anything otherwise?

Maybe many americans would disagree, right until the moment when they're nearly vomiting their guts out at the pharmacy, waiting for their zofran, which is going to cost them several hundred dollars, just because they're getting a version with a little glucose added so it doesn't taste as bad when you take it.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#65

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:43 AM UTC

striking wrote: post #19

mingus88 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite take, actually. I had to think about it for a sec and suddenly, “oh, right. Novo nordisk == Danish == Scandinavian design” cute. This style of writing is a welcome change from all the AI slop or self promoting blogs out there. It’s a personal touch without making it all about the author. Long form articles with some humor used to be all I wanted to read on the web.

I think it is potentially still AI prose, perhaps just well-edited or working from a good prompt. Aside from using quite a few em dashes and being relentless in shoving cleverness in, there's a link to Wikipedia with a `?utm_source=chatgpt.com` in there. To be clear, whether or not it is AI prose is beside the point in my opinion. I think this piece is informative and funny but could be edited down significantly, reg…

[deleted]

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#66

Post by nijave » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:43 AM UTC

classichasclass wrote: post #57

wonderwonder wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You can order a significant variety of antibiotics over the counter / web in the US. I have 2 Z-Paks, a bottle of Amoxicillin and a bottle of Doxycycline sitting in my medical drawer. You can order them legally via US based online pharmacies. If you are an adult you should have the freedom to treat yourself. Freedom does not absolve you of responsibility though. If I mess myself up I have no one to blame but mys…

I can't agree with you there, because if you're treating with the wrong dose or for the wrong length of time, you run the risk of making that infection resistant. For communicable illnesses, that can be a risk for others. But I appreciate your honesty. I should also add that those pharmacies, if they are based on the United States, invariably have a licensed provider in there signing off (they would be illegal otherw…

I don't know about op but I've heard the veterinarian versions of antibiotics are widely available. Who knows on the quality control

I believe many obtained ivermectin through similar channels despite it being a prescription drug

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#67

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

jrflowers wrote: post #31

Spooky23 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your position is simple: where does it come from? The legit path for compounded semaglutide is buying up Rybelsus, impacting the supply for diabetics. Compounding pharmacies are notoriously shady, and are likely using grey market materials from questionable sources.

Can you give some specific examples of compounding pharmacies buying up Rybelsus or using grey market GLP-1

There’s a bunch of material out there including acknowledgment from the association of compounding pharmacies.

They are in general shady, and the Florida pharmacies are notoriously under-regulated. Guess where most of the online dick pill outlets do their compounding?

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#68

Post by turnsout » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #47

turnsout wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

An oligopoly colluding to push the price of easily produced products into the stratosphere isn't a product of deregulation . In a deregulated or under-regulated market, thousands of cottage-industry insulin producers would be competing to shave pennies off the prices of their insulin. You might have a hard time finding safely produced insulin, but you wouldn't have a hard time finding cheap insulin. Oligopolies collu…

This is a complex picture, so there's much more going on here than Big Pharma trying to squeeze out white-knight compounding pharmacies and supplement makers. What we have in the US is an industry that is constantly at the brink of system collapse, because that's the point of maximum efficiency/optimization. Pharma charges whatever payers (insurance companies) will support, and payers pass on whatever consumers can bear before literally becoming insolvent.

Consumers are so alienated that they'll pay out of pocket for a disruptor like Hims, which is doing its best to circumvent the entire system. Sadly, just as there's little government oversight to prevent pharma from becoming monopolistic, there's virtually no regulation on supplements. So you end up with the worst of both worlds; you can either take the $1000 monopoly pill or the $2 gas station pill filled with sawdust and raccoon repellant.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#69

Post by addicted » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:45 AM UTC

n8cpdx wrote: post #15

> Regulatory arbitrage disguised as innovation, dressed in the fashionable vocabulary of patient empowerment while serving no master but the quarterly earnings call. No masters except the patients that are literally being empowered to make choices about their medical care and are paying a substantial premium (in many cases) to do so. I would happily be empowered by my doctor and UnitedHealthcare instead, but sadly th…

I'm confused. An insurance company cannot reject a prescription. They can only reject paying for it.

So if you're paying for it with Hims why wouldn't you be willing to pay for the medication the doctor prescribes to you if the insurance company is refusing to pay for it?

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#70

Post by ch4s3 » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 1:45 AM UTC

turnsout wrote: post #39

ggm-at-algebras wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unsure why you have been down voted because fundamentally your point is correct. Health is a fully regulated space, and no entity should be supplying medical products without adherence to requirements appropriate to their role. Compounding GLP-1 seems to me to be in the higher bar space.

[dead]

Factually healthcare is more regulated than most industries in the US and the web of regulations has no design and where it does, patient safety is rarely the primary goal.