AngieHolmes
Explorer
Still, the US and various other nations keep pushing forward! With fewer folks landing on their radar, I'm curious how the shamers will fill their suddenly empty schedules.
Article: How GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs Are Reshaping the Healthcare Industry
- Thread starter oldrunnerguy
- Start date
moodymama76
Explorer
Some people will always find something to criticize.
AngieHolmes
Explorer
Out of every possible use of the scarce time you have on this earth . . .
GLP1Pharmacist
Explorer
I can't agree with that. For me and plenty of other people, the opposite is true: we visit a provider MORE frequently now that we're taking an active role in our own care. That covers lab work, an annual physical, health check-ins, and beyond. On top of that, there's the plastic surgery tied to weight loss, something I never would have dreamed of pursuing before losing so much weight. I also hear about people looking into hair transplants, breast implants, joint repairs to improve their mobility, and other treatments aimed at defying age.
Just A Cat
Explorer
Medical staff might need to swap out their "specialty," yet that's as far as the medical fallout goes. A bariatric surgeon's day-to-day will look different.
Other professionals, meanwhile, will keep their specialty but alter their daily tasks. For plastic surgeons, the shift just means performing a different set of procedures.
Given how deep the backlog runs in the US, a 20% drop in overall healthcare demand won't translate into lost jobs—only a reshuffling of roles.
The US system is already broken. Long waits for a five to ten minute visit, often poor service rendered, out of control and unpredictable bills.
Visit a functional doctor who doesn't accept insurance, and suddenly the appointment stretches longer, digs deeper, and delivers far better outcomes.
It's funny—when a doctor actually has time to talk with you, both the treatment and the results can improve dramatically.
Other professionals, meanwhile, will keep their specialty but alter their daily tasks. For plastic surgeons, the shift just means performing a different set of procedures.
Given how deep the backlog runs in the US, a 20% drop in overall healthcare demand won't translate into lost jobs—only a reshuffling of roles.
The US system is already broken. Long waits for a five to ten minute visit, often poor service rendered, out of control and unpredictable bills.
Visit a functional doctor who doesn't accept insurance, and suddenly the appointment stretches longer, digs deeper, and delivers far better outcomes.
It's funny—when a doctor actually has time to talk with you, both the treatment and the results can improve dramatically.
BNLFL
Explorer
I've seriously considered picking up 1,000 shares. Yesterday, as I recall, the price was roughly $1,200/share.bogardbilla said:
That's exactly why holding Eli Lilly stock makes more senseHerkimer P Shagnasty said:
When folks require fewer medical services, that's a positive.
Unless you happen to own stock in a healthcare corporation
I don't have much money, so I picked up a small fraction of a share back when it was around 900. On the other hand, I grabbed three shares of Roles Royce for about a buck, and it's sitting at 20 now
These days, though, my main investment is my health 
hotsauceboss
Explorer
At Christmas dinner back in 2011, I brought up Bitcoin with my family — this new thing I'd heard about. I never ended up buying any, thoughladyj779 said:
I'm poor so I bought some tiny percentage of a share when it was like 900. But I bought three shares of Roles Royce at like a buck, and now it's at 20
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I honestly believed I came up with self-tanning wipes before anyone elsehotsauceboss said:
I talked to my family about this new thing called Bitcoin at Christmas dinner in 2011. Never bought any though
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I feel your pain!
Herkimer P Shagnasty
Explorer
I've got the same kind of tale! Around Christmas of 2016, my brother picked up about 24 bitcoins and kept going on and on about how much they could climb.hotsauceboss said:
I talked to my family about this new thing called Bitcoin at Christmas dinner in 2011. Never bought any though
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My response was: "That has to be the dumbest idea I've ever come across. No chance I'm putting $900 into some made-up money that lives only on a computer."
Today he's worth millions. All from $20k put in 10 years back.
Every single Christmas, he finds a way to mention it.
CathyGoesFar
Explorer
That stings a lot. Back in the day I picked up just a sliver of a bitcoin — roughly $30. Had I simply kept doing that with each paycheck, it might have grown into something substantial.
Troposphere
Explorer
I felt like this story needed a brighter note from me. My father died quietly while he slept. He reached 80, which gave him roughly 15 more years than his brother and his dad got. Only 2 days afterward, he was supposed to have lunch with a woman he was seeing, so he still had game!
On top of that, he was still drumming with his jazz trio and performing shows!
lessthanhalf
Explorer
Economics-heavy pieces usually lose my attention fast, but GLP's are already shifting things, and the changes ahead will be far bigger. Over the last year, bariatric surgery has fallen by roughly 20-30%, and regardless of how good GLP's are, surgery still beats them on long-term outcomes for conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. Whether going under the knife makes sense today is a separate matter; at least with grey GLP's, reta or tirz plus elora could work just as well, with far less of the surgery's unpleasantness and fewer long-term adverse effects. Still, surgeons have been publishing a great many papers lately arguing that weight loss surgery outperforms GLP's, so the danger to their livelihoods is genuine and I believe it worries them.
The cost of the GLP's is the glaring flaw in every cost effectiveness study I have come across. They cut long-term health care costs substantially. Even if you see your doctor more frequently while taking them, the serious money in health care goes to hospital treatment of serious illness or, worse, aged care. And roughly half of lifetime healthcare costs are spent in the last 6 months of life. Preventing, or merely postponing, a large share of heart attacks, strokes, bypass operations, cancers and possibly dementia lowers long-term health care costs enormously, yet the payoff may be a decade out for the patient, the insurance company or a government, while the upfront costs are large and continuous. So if retail tirz runs $700/month, whoever pays must see those long-term costs fall by $84000 over the next decade, and must commit to the upfront and ongoing investment.
The Australian government will not fund them on a broad scale anytime soon. Even if the cost benefit analysis looked good, paying $700 a month for tirz for up to 1/3 the population would wreck the healthcare budget, so whatever subsidies exist cover semaglutide only and are tightly targeted at limited very high risk groups, where the illness-prevention payoff arrives sooner than a decade away.
Prices in China have already come down since their homegrown GLP was released; I read that tirz and sema prices there dropped 50-70% in response. I am not sure whether generic sema is available in Canada yet or what it costs, but sema at least will be off patent in many places soon, just not the US or Australia. Meanwhile the number of GLP's and related weight loss drugs in development is insane. Not all will make it, and of those arriving soon, most are ones we already know about and will not be cheap, like reta or cagri or elora, but plenty of others are 2 to 4 years away. Once there are a lot of them, I simply cannot see how prices stay so high, unless China does not even try to market them in the west, leaving us with expensive GLP's while the rest of the world gets cheap ones. That would no doubt produce a new different grey market for GLP's.
The cost of the GLP's is the glaring flaw in every cost effectiveness study I have come across. They cut long-term health care costs substantially. Even if you see your doctor more frequently while taking them, the serious money in health care goes to hospital treatment of serious illness or, worse, aged care. And roughly half of lifetime healthcare costs are spent in the last 6 months of life. Preventing, or merely postponing, a large share of heart attacks, strokes, bypass operations, cancers and possibly dementia lowers long-term health care costs enormously, yet the payoff may be a decade out for the patient, the insurance company or a government, while the upfront costs are large and continuous. So if retail tirz runs $700/month, whoever pays must see those long-term costs fall by $84000 over the next decade, and must commit to the upfront and ongoing investment.
The Australian government will not fund them on a broad scale anytime soon. Even if the cost benefit analysis looked good, paying $700 a month for tirz for up to 1/3 the population would wreck the healthcare budget, so whatever subsidies exist cover semaglutide only and are tightly targeted at limited very high risk groups, where the illness-prevention payoff arrives sooner than a decade away.
Prices in China have already come down since their homegrown GLP was released; I read that tirz and sema prices there dropped 50-70% in response. I am not sure whether generic sema is available in Canada yet or what it costs, but sema at least will be off patent in many places soon, just not the US or Australia. Meanwhile the number of GLP's and related weight loss drugs in development is insane. Not all will make it, and of those arriving soon, most are ones we already know about and will not be cheap, like reta or cagri or elora, but plenty of others are 2 to 4 years away. Once there are a lot of them, I simply cannot see how prices stay so high, unless China does not even try to market them in the west, leaving us with expensive GLP's while the rest of the world gets cheap ones. That would no doubt produce a new different grey market for GLP's.
davefromfv
Explorer
Right as Universal Healthcare is about to start.
lessthanhalf
Explorer
Australia already has a system quite similar to that, except private medicine also operates alongside it. However, the government can only cover ozempic, and only for diabetics or individuals who are severely obese and have already experienced a heart attack or stroke—tirz is not funded.
True, however that field is entirely separate. Gastroenterologists make up the main group performing bariatric surgery, while plastic surgeons handle skin removal procedures. While a hospital network might shift resources from bariatric to plastic surgery, an individual doctor cannot make that change without undergoing extensive further training.