Isn’t market competition just the utmost gorgeousness?

The latest and greatest medical treatment for something that ails all too much of society is now available for one hour’s average work a week:

The first pill version of the blockbuster GLP-1 weight loss drugs has been launched in the US by Novo Nordisk at a lower cost than jab varieties, accelerating a price war in the sector.

The Danish pharmaceutical company said on Monday that its once-a-day Wegovy pill, which received approval from the US regulator just before Christmas, was now available in the country.

The median US wage is around $35 an hour:

Self-paying patients can buy the pill for $5 (£3.70) a day, or $149 a month

With 4.33 weeks in a month that’s near exact, one hour’s work a week.

A useful example of what makes the system work. Sure, sure, the capitalists at Novo Nordisk have made a fortune here. So much so that it’s affecting the numbers for the entirety of the Danish economy. But:

….fierce competition from US rival Eli Lilly’s jabs Mounjaro and Zepbound.

Then we get to that market part, that competition, and the benefit flows out to us, us consumers. We get the new thing, here that treatment for obesity and diabetes and even kidney failure - it’s worth recalling that the share prices of the dialysis companies slumped when the drug trial was ended early the results were so emphatic on the good side - at that peanuts, trivial, cost. Both the incentive to develop the treatment and also the pass through of the benefit to us at large.

Do note that this is while there is still legal, patent, protection for these drugs. Give it another decade and we’ll be talking aspirin prices*.

Capitalist free marketry - ain’t it just a system of the utmost gorgeousness?

Tim Worstall

*OK, bit of an exaggeration, but….