There is a new Gold Rush of sorts that is quite different than the one that began in California in 1848. Weight loss drugs, like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Saxena, are selling like hotcakes, with demand far outstripping supply. These drugs are lucrative, costing $1,000 a month or more, depending on the rebate or health plan discount.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Tuesday Links
- A pill to treat alcoholism exists.
- Why is there shortage of pediatricians? Because they get paid less than every other specialty. (NYT) I will have more to say about this in the future.
- “Nothing correlates more with homelessness rates than high housing costs. And nothing drives up housing costs like government restrictions on building housing.”
- Are there so many cesarean births in December because that lowers the parents’ income taxes? From a tax perspective, “A New Year’s Eve baby is better than a New Year’s Day baby.”
Monday Links
- Physician-administered specialty drugs comprise 55% of U.S. drug spending and over half of that spending is on oncology. If the Bureau of Labor Statistics Prescription Drug Consumer Price Index included these drugs it would be 22% higher.
- One union saved $33 million a year on its health plan, generating funds to give its nearly 200,000 members $3,000 bonuses and their largest pay raise in history –primarily by carving out of its plan one major price-gouging hospital.
- To determine whether a person is eligible for Social Security disability, the government uses a depression era list of 10,000 occupations that was only partially updated 30 years ago.
- Why do you remember some things and not others?
- Why drinking alcohol on airplanes may be bad for you. (NYT)
Where Biden Went Wrong
This is Scott Sumner quoting (pro-Biden commentator) Matt Yglesias:
I would not expect any Democratic administration to weaken Davis-Bacon rules as an anti-inflationary measure, even though doing so would advance a number of Biden’s stated policy objectives.