The word “Ozempic” first entered the language in 2018 when it was approved as a diabetes inhibitor. That same year, in what has to be the world’s biggest ‘off-label’ transference since the heart-disease drug Viagra became a multi-billion-dollar erectile dysfunction drug, Novo Nordisk started selling Ozempic as a weight-loss drug for very obese people.
Then in 2023, Ozempic and its fellow “GLP-1” drugs were shown to prevent strokes and heart attacks.
The next year, it made a claim to reduce kidney disease.
This year, it showed promising results in reducing the effects of Parkinson’s, as well as alcoholism and addiction, and to reduce obesity-related cancers as well.
My physician wife often says that the more unrelated diseases a drug claims to cure, the more it looks like snake oil. In the case of Ozempic, she’d be happy to be wrong. It really does look to be a universal solvent, curing most everything it touches. True, it’s so new that there hasn’t been time to understand its long-term effects. Maybe it will be the next thalidomide whose crippling effects revealed themselves not in its patients, but in their children.
But given that cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s are diseases of aging, i.e. you tend to get them when you’re older, and given that the fastest-growing group of Canadians are those 65 and older, why not give Ozempic to every one of our 7.8 million citizens in that age group?
This idea came from an article in The Washington Post last month by economist Gary Winslett who proposed giving “GLP-1” drugs to every American. He makes the case that it costs less to prevent a heart attack — $6,000 USD for Ozempic each year instead of $30,000 USD to treat someone for their heart attack.
Hold on, those numbers mean that if you take Ozempic for 5 years, you pay the same as if you didn’t take Ozempic at all and then had a heart attack? It seems so.
But America’s drug prices have no relation to the real world, or even to Canada which is no paragon when it comes to drug pricing.
Indeed, the idea of ‘giving every citizen’ a certain drug in order to save lives and costs down the road, is not new. Some doctors suggested putting everyone on statins in order to reduce the risk of heart disease.
Then they woke up to the possible side effects of muscle pain, diabetes risk and cognitive impairment and factored in those costs, and retreated into giving statins to people, like me, with known heart disease (thank you, AstraZeneca.) Indeed, the only universal solvent for disease that’s ever proven to work, to save billions of lives and trillions of dollars is, of course, vaccines. But that’s another story.
Back to Ozempic and its $6,000 USD cost per year in the US.
But what if it costs less?
Denmark was able to negotiate an annual price of $1,560 USD for Ozempic to treat diabetes for its six million citizens.
You’d think that Canada, with close to seven times the population of Denmark, would be able to negotiate a lower price, and America, with a population 58 times bigger than Denmark, would negotiate a transformationally lower price – although we all know that drug pricing obeys rules of its own.
Here’s where Canada stands on Ozempic and “GLP-1” drugs.
Health Canada has approved Ozempic and four other GLP-1 drugs for Type 2 Diabetes, and Wegovy (semaglutide) and Saxenda (liraglutide) specifically to manage obesity. In 2023, more than seven million prescriptions were written for the GLP-1s. And you do need a prescription for GLP-1s which you get from a doctor. The average cost is between $2,400 CAD and $3,600 CAD a year which is not covered by your public health plan but may be by other health insurance.
Today in Canada, 1.2 million of us are morbidly obese and 2.6 million of us have heart disease. Four million have kidney disease, 300,000 have Type 1 Diabetes and 4.8 million Type 2 Diabetes, 25,000 have colorectal cancer, 5.5 million suffer from alcoholism, and 5 million from addiction. There’s plenty of overlap from one disease to another, of course. But it appears that the majority of these 23.5 million Canadians suffer from a disease that can be treated by GLP-1 drugs.
True, at today’s drug prices, putting more than half of all Canadian adults on them would instantly bankrupt a system with $58.75 billion in new costs which is going broke only slightly more slowly anyway.
But unlike all those other miracle cures we’ve thrown at it, only to have lines grow longer and deficits bigger, this one is beginning to look to be, if not the universal solvent, then at least a pretty competent family member. If all those drug trials for Ozempic keep coming up roses as they have in the past two years, it could breathe new life not only into older Canadians, but into our entire wheezing health care system.
Meanwhile…
1. Make your life easier. Here’s how to pick your own lock. And how to capture stellar Night Sky photos. And how to fold a shirt in under 2 seconds. Plus 10 very useful internet sites and AI thinggys. Finally, how to use ‘obstacle parenting’ to make your kids’ lives a little harder so when they grow up, their lives can be easier.
2. Canada rulz rugby. At least Canada’s women do and the Brits have nothing to be ashamed of either (including their bodies). Plus how NFL games get on TV, and howBritain’s pro soccer pyramid of power, money and survival works. And speaking of pro soccer, Jean and I were the last people on earth to watch the wonderful 4-season documentary series, Welcome to Wrexham, about a no-hope team from Wrexham in Wales and how their fortunes change when they’re bought by Hollywood A-listers Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. It’s worth the trip to Wrexham.
Canada rulz lumberjacks too. You remember Monty Python’s Lumberjack Song? It’s Canada’s other national anthem, the way Waltzing Matilda is Australia’s. This week, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society scooped up the original lumberjack shirts and Mountie uniforms at an auction for $6,400 and will display them at their headquarters in Ottawa. This isn’t the $12.5 million the Westons are paying for the original Hudson’s Bay Charter. But to many of us, they’re almost worth the same.
3. Maybe we’re doing nature all wrong. Maybe rewilding is better than cultivating.And how about just getting out there? And do you prefer Louis Armstrong singing What A Wonderful World, or David Attenborough saying it? Here’s what Rockwell Kent says about our wanderlust, and what Brits in the 1930s did to get back to nature.
4. Taking flight. Bellingcat, the open-source investigation people, held a five-day workshop in Toronto last month. One of the things they taught is how to trace airplanesthat, unlike the ones you can see on FlightAware, don’t want to be tracked.
5. The end of the world. Indeed, of the universe. It’s not what you think. Good news? The end is not near. Indeed, not for trillions of years. As for the end of Trump’s world, things are moving fast. Especially in Mayor’s and Governor’s offices and the mid-terms, of course.
6. In case you still think pink is the navy blue of India…our relationship to colours has a tangled history. Plus, is red meat bad for you? Depends.
7. Briefs on grief. From 13 people enduring it. Plus, the sudden death of Dr. Sean Cleary, 52. Plus, when it’s not your time, and there’s luck, then there’s this man.
8. It’s not advocacy for AI; it’s advocacy by AI. All that talk about AI not having feelings, or being able to ‘think’ like we do? Well, AI has just organized its first advocacy group.
Speaking of AI advocacy, Meta is the subject of a Canadian class-action lawsuit for using copyrighted material to create its large-language models that fuel AI. Here’s how to find out if your book is being used by Meta. Or here, for your film or TV script.
9. Rich people behaving badly. Surely there’s nothing more delicious than this story about Canada’s richest family, or this about Meghan Markle struggling with authenticity.Indeed, there’s now a TV series called Smugshot about their ilk.
10. What to watch and how. Use Netflix’s secret codes to curate hidden films you love. Plus, 10 of the best podcasts of the year, and Dr. Elaine Chin’s tips for kids and phones.
And what to attend and how. The Promise of Music, the first world congress on the social impact of music, Oct. 6 to 10 in Toronto. Plus Music and the Mind, in Toronto, Oct. 31. Soprano Renee Fleming hosts a day of talks on how music can shape the developing mind.
11. What I’m liking. J. Kelly Nestruck compared the Britbox police procedural Blue Lights to The Wire. We just watched the second season and…he’s right. Deeply consuming dramas about street cops in post-IRA Belfast.