Impiricus’ Post

The gold rush to capture a piece of the $100 billion market for the next big wonder drug is on, and the competition is going to get fierce. Hims & Hers, a telehealth company perhaps best known for offering a generic version of Viagra, is putting out a new Ozempic copycat drug that would be significantly cheaper than the name-brand versions, which are incredibly expensive without insurance and still difficult to find. Right now, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly dominate the GLP-1 weight loss/diabetes drug market through brands like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound. Almost all of the forecasted pharma growth worldwide is expected to come from this one drug class. There’s no way two companies are going to have a monopoly on these drugs, and we’ve been waiting to see what competitors will do. Hims & Hers is attempting the first big challenge to Novo and Lilly’s dominance. How they fare will not only forecast the future of the pharma industry but could impact how Americans get access to a drug that has the potential to drastically alleviate the obesity epidemic. Hims & Hers is offering its weight-loss shots for $199 a month - an 85% discount compared to Wegovy, which costs $1,350 without insurance. That’s a huge deal because A) the drugs sometimes aren’t covered, and B) you need to take it indefinitely for it to keep working, so the lifetime cost could be astronomical: 10 years of Wegovy would cost over $160,000 without insurance help. Given that Hims & Hers’ stock jumped as much as 38% the day of the GLP-1 announcement, it won’t be long until other companies follow suit. Typically drug companies are protected by competitors though patents that prevent generic versions from entering the market for a decade or more. In this case, U.S. regulations allow firms to make copycat drugs using “compounding” medications when drugs are in shortages. The FDA doesn’t approve compounded medications the way it does with name-brand prescriptions, so safety issues remain a concern. The agency has already advised patients not to take compounded versions of GLP-1 if patented FDA-approved versions are available. Still, the demand for the weight-loss pens are so high that people might be more willing to overlook those concerns if compounded versions are the only ones they can get their hands on. Even if supply issues improve for the name-brand pens, the massive cost difference might be enough for people to order the compounded versions.