Local pharmacies say they’re struggling to afford GLP-1s

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Har­ry Webb has seen a flur­ry of in­ter­est in pop­u­lar weight loss drugs at his in­de­pen­dent phar­ma­cies in In­di­ana, but he doesn’t know how much longer he can af­ford to stock them.

Many lo­cal phar­ma­cies are los­ing mon­ey on glucagon-like pep­tide-1 (GLP-1) re­cep­tor ag­o­nists like No­vo Nordisk’s Ozem­pic and We­govy as re­im­burse­ment rates come in be­low ac­qui­si­tion cost, ac­cord­ing to an in­for­mal sur­vey from the Na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ty Phar­ma­cists As­so­ci­a­tion. Re­spon­dents re­port­ed los­ing an av­er­age of more than $37 per 30-day sup­ply, ac­cord­ing to the un­pub­lished sur­vey. 

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