More than 20,000 Australians face being immediately shunted off their weight loss medications in June if the drug regulator proceeds with its telegraphed plans to ban replica versions of Ozempic and Mounjaro. The pending move sets up a fight with online healthcare start-ups Eucalyptus and NIB’s Midnight Health, which offer the medications that are in short supply around the country.
But it would be a huge boon to the multibillion-dollar drug giants Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly that developed the blockbuster weight loss drugs only to have their monopoly undermined.Eucalyptus chief executive Tim Doyle said he feared the regulator would push ahead with its plans, which he said his company – likely the largest weight loss drug seller in Australia – was not initially consulted on.“Without the medication and without the ongoing lifestyle changes that we are trying to do for these patients, the overwhelming data says that those patients will put the weight back on,” Mr Doyle sai