Our methodology

Every number on this site comes from one of five public sources. This page states which, how each figure is derived, and what each one cannot tell you.

1. CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost (NADAC). A weekly survey of

what retail pharmacies pay to acquire a drug. Published per pricing unit.

1. FDA National Drug Code directory. Product, package and labeler listings.

The source of every pack size.

1. CMS Medicare Part D prescriber data. Prescriber and claim counts by

geography and drug, for 2024.

1. CMS State Drug Utilization. Quarterly Medicaid prescription counts and

reimbursement, by state and product.

1. FDA enforcement records. Published warning letters, the registered

outsourcing facility list, and closeout letters.

Programme prices are not federal data. They are read from each programme's own site and recorded with an observer, a date and the URL they were read from.

NADAC publishes a rate per pricing unit. Ozempic is priced per millilitre. A pen holds 3 mL, and a carton holds several pens.

The package cost is the NADAC rate multiplied by the pack size from the FDA NDC directory. Nothing is estimated. Where a package's size cannot be parsed from the FDA listing, the package is excluded rather than approximated, so a missing price shows as absent instead of as a wrong number.

This is a pharmacy acquisition cost. It is what a pharmacy pays a wholesaler. It is not a retail price, not an insurance price, and not what a patient pays. Every page that shows one says so beside the figure.

Part D counts describe Medicare prescribing only. They exclude commercial insurance, Medicaid and cash-pay entirely, so they are a floor on prescribing activity, never a total.

City counts include only clinicians with 11 or more claims of a drug. CMS suppresses smaller cells to protect patient privacy, so a city page understates the real count and says which direction it errs in.

State counts come from CMS's own state roll-up rather than from summing city figures, which would double-count a clinician who practises in two cities.

State Drug Utilization is quarterly. Fee-for-service and managed care are added together, because the page reports total Medicaid activity in the state.

Suppressed cells are excluded, never treated as zero. A state with no publishable figure is reported as having none, which is different from a state that paid nothing.

Every FDA warning letter is read from the agency's published list. A letter is kept when its text names a GLP-1 molecule.

Each letter page quotes one passage from the letter and links the letter itself. The quote is the evidence; the page never paraphrases an allegation.

Three distinctions carry through every safety page:

• A warning letter is an allegation the FDA has published. It is not a court

finding.

• A closeout letter means the agency considers the matter addressed. Its absence

means no closeout has been published, not that the matter is unresolved.

• Registering as a 503B outsourcing facility is a filing, not an approval.

"Not yet inspected" is not a passed inspection.

A letter is linked to a programme only where the named firm can be matched to it with confidence. An unmatched letter stays on its own page rather than being attributed to a company that may not be the one named.

Each price is stored as an observation with a date, an observer and the URL it was read from. Observations are append-only, so an old price becomes history rather than being overwritten.

Three rules decide the headline "from" price, and all three are enforced in the database rather than in a page:

1. The standing rate, never the introductory month. A programme priced at

$147 for one month and $297 after is listed at $297. Ranking it at $147 would describe a price nobody pays twice.

1. All-in beats service-only. Where a programme sells the consultation

separately from the medication, the figure used is the one that includes the medication.

1. A copay is not a price. Where a figure depends on the reader's insurance,

no price is recorded. The programme still shows which drugs it prescribes.

An introductory price appears beside a standing price only when both belong to the same plan.

Ratings and written verdicts are editorial judgements published by glp1watchdog.com. They are carried here as that site's assessment and are not derived from the federal data on this site.

Everything else on a programme page — price, fees, states served, pharmacy type, enforcement record — is a recorded fact with a source and a date.

A page is not published because its subject exists. It is published when it has something to say, and the rule is written per page type:

• A cost page needs a resolvable NADAC package cost.
• A state cost page needs unsuppressed Medicaid data and a price.
• A comparison needs a price on both sides.
• A ranking needs at least three qualifying programmes.
• A programme review needs a rating and at least one price verified by us.
• A letter page needs the quoted passage.

Remove the data and the page comes down again. The check runs on every refresh.

NADAC publishes weekly and the ingest follows it. Part D is annual. State Drug Utilization is quarterly. FDA enforcement records are read weekly.

Each page shows the effective date of the data it holds, not the date the page was last touched.

Where a figure on this site disagrees with its source, the source is right. Corrections are made against the source file and the page's date moves with them. Report one to [email protected] with the page and the figure.