HCG availability

[Guest guest]

I have secondary hypogonadism and have been taking HCG for several years. But

there's something funny going on with the availability. I wonder if anyone here

knows what is going on behind the scenes and where one can find a steady supply

at a reasonable price.

For the first few years it was not too hard for me to find HCG and i usually

obtained it from Costco at about $45 for a 10000 IU vial. They had both Novarel

and Pregnyl at various times. Then, suddenly around 2 or 3 years ago it was

impossible to find HCG at any regular pharmacy. I was finally able to find a

pharmacy that specialized in fertility medicines that always had HCG in stock

(Novarel). They sold it to me for about the same price as Costco. I obtained it

there for a couple of years at least.

Somewhere around 6 months ago the specialty pharmacy told me that they could

still sell me HCG but the price would be going up to over $120 per 10000 IU

(170% increase). They said that this was related to two factors: 1. Their

contract with the makers of Novarel no longer allowed them to sell it at a

preferred price to persons with hypogonadism, but only to women trying to become

pregnant. 2. They said there was a current diet fad that involved claims that

HCG could cause weight loss. This may have affected the supply and the price.

This pharmacy also told me that HCG should now be available again at other

pharmacies including Costco. They said that they would always have Novarel in

stock but other pharmacies would likely sell me HCG at a much lower price.

After a couple of months I was again able to get HCG at Costco. It was Pregnyl

and cost around $60.

Now after only two or three months Costco is again telling me that they cannot

obtain HCG from their wholesaler.

I'm wondering whether a lot of this is some kind of game on the part of major

drug companies. HCG is refined from the urine of pregnant women. Thus the

supply should be infinite. But I assume there is no patent on it. So perhaps

the drug companies are trying to pressure the users to use much more expensive

patented drugs. Pregnyl is made by Organon, and I noticed that the URL

organon.com just leads to the Merck website. Also many years ago when Androgel

was introduced I noticed the same type of thing; it became impossible to find

injectable testosterone. In one case this was because the FDA closed down one

of the factories producing it.