So NN spends over $10 billion in research over the last three decades and they have only been profitable the last few years. Why shouldn't they make their money back that they spent on the backend regardless of what it costs them to actually produce it now?
Fortunately, my insurance covers Ozempic and has for the last 3 years. I pay $15/mo. My insurance pays over $1000/mo. I am here in case I get dropped....
I won't even entertain the health insurance cost argument here. I lived in England for part of my childhood and remember my mother having to wait 4 months for a dentist appt... my cousin's son hurt himself playing rugby a few months ago. 3 weeks wait for an MRI or pay out of pocket? We impatient Americans would not last a minute in one of these countries and would be paying out of pocket, like they do, for everything.
The government should fund (and well!) R&D and production of drugs. I don't think pharma companies are necessarily evil, but it's very apparent that incentives are misaligned with the drug industry being for-profit. Also, by the sources I can find, NN has been profitable since at least 2009 -
https://www.statista.com/statistics/947619/net-profit-of-novo-nordisk/ - and based on the trends, likely for longer than that. And, to be clear, Novo Nordisk's market cap is currently 370b. Lilly's is 740b. These are not companies that are barely keeping their heads above water after now that they've found the light at the end of the tunnel.
But, that's orthogonal to my point either way - NN and EL and co. should simply not exist in their current incarnation. Profit driving what you spend your time researching and bringing to market heavily incentivizes long term management of disease over curing it. It disincentivizes any sort of work that is unlikely to produce a high ROI.
Even from a practical perspective, having a happy and healthy population is key to having a productive population.
Obviously, that's not the world we live in, and I think that yes, EL and NN should be able to seek profits. But we also know that they are making plenty of money and would recoup their R&D costs and much much more at significantly lower pricing than we have in America, where the pricing is far higher than even in other similarly wealthy countries.
The answer to why is complex, but basically none of those reasons are beneficial to the citizens of the country on the whole.
Wait times are also a complex topic. They are based on assessed medical necessity. It's not perfect, and lots of countries with socialized medicine do better than England does, but the worst waits are for elective procedures or for situations where the evidence is that it is not a serious health concern. But there's also nothing inherent that requires socialized drug development to also result in socialized healthcare, regardless of your thoughts on the latter.
