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Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

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Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#81

Post by nceqs3 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #75
nceqs3 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly stupid comment. Net price in Humalog has decreased since 2014 [0]. The PBMs jack up the list price so they can get their fat rebates. [0] = https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/25/eli-lilly-discloses-pricing-... .

Eli Lilly's profit margin is double digit, usually around 20%. Managed care organizations (insurance companies), which own the PBMs, have profit margins of ~5% or less.

That is a nonsense talking point from the industry. They use passthrough revenue to distort their profit margin. Express scripts is closer to 15% and CVS is closer to 10%.

See https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/facing-criticism-pbms....

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#82

Post by lotsofpulp »

DerpyBaby123 wrote: post #77
lotsofpulp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was developed in 1996, the patent protection would have expired by now. If the cost of production was "steady", then the question is why is a competitor not jumping in to make and sell something that would earn them a huge profit margin?

Do you doubt it was developed in 1996? Do you have evidence that the cost of production has significantly risen? Otherwise, you seem to be repeating the old economics joke: "The young economist looks down and sees a $20 bill on the street and says, “Hey, look a twenty-dollar bill!” Without even looking, his older and wiser colleague replies, “Nonsense. If there had been a twenty-dollar lying on the street, someone wo…

When there is a claim that there exists an arbitrage opportunity worth billions of dollars, I would consider it common sense to consider why has no one claimed the arbitrage opportunity yet.

The world has many very smart people spending many hours working very hard to find these opportunities, so the likelihood of it just sitting there like a $20 bill on the street, and not being picked up, seems quite small.

I do not know the answer myself, so I am interested in finding out. reddicky posted this:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/why_peop...

which sort of answers it:

>Biotech insulin is now the standard in the U.S., the authors say. Patents on the first synthetic insulin expired in 2014, but these newer forms are harder to copy, so the unpatented versions will go through a lengthy Food and Drug Administration approval process and cost more to make. When these insulins come on the market, they may cost just 20 to 40 percent less than the patented versions, Riggs and Greene write.

So it looks like there is some expensive expertise involved and investment into R&D that needs to be done.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#83

Post by nceqs3 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #68
nceqs3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The net price on Humalog has gone down since 2014. The PBMs are the ones who distort list prices.

The PBMs are mostly owned and operated by the managed care organizations (insurance companies). The insurance companies have profit margins of less than 5%.

This is not true and just an industry talking point from the PBMs. They use revenue tricks to hide their profit margin.

See https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/facing-criticism-pbms...

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#84

Post by skohan »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #51
skohan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the actual situation there? I have read that cheap insulin for example is available at WallMart, but for some reason the price of insulin seems to be a huge issue.

The situation is that Type 2 Diabetes has raised the demand for insulin. More demand raises prices. The thing we can't talk about without risking cancellation is that nearly all Type 2 Diabetes is preventable. In other words, the choices of the many have a significant negative impact on those (i.e., Type 1'ers) who don't really have a choice.

Do you have a source on the scarcity claim? My understanding was that insulin is incredibly cheap to produce.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#85

Post by nceqs3 »

a3n wrote: post #79
HarryHirsch wrote: post #9

Insulin is a solved problem, in first-world countries the sale price is fixed and there's public healthcare. But in America you are supposed to take "personal responsibility" for your own health and biohack your way ouf of type 1 diabetes?! Srsly? This s a political, not a scientific problem. Call your congresscritter.

> Call your congresscritter. Sorry, but regular people don't make "campaign contributions" of any noticable size, so all we get back is a form letter acknowledgement based on whatever box you checked for subject. Big Pharma, Big X and Big Y, on the other hand, "donate" enough "campaign contributions" that the campaigner can all but ensure (re) election based on recent name recognition to get the nomination, then coun…

Factually incorrect comment. Corporations cannot make campaign contributions.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#86

Post by wwweston »

birdyrooster wrote: post #37
HarryHirsch wrote: post #9

Insulin is a solved problem, in first-world countries the sale price is fixed and there's public healthcare. But in America you are supposed to take "personal responsibility" for your own health and biohack your way ouf of type 1 diabetes?! Srsly? This s a political, not a scientific problem. Call your congresscritter.

Found your problem: "African American adults are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes by a physician." Given that the middle class is very white and employed with insurance coverage, it virtually doesn't affect white people. Our politics takes black people's votes for granted and don't do anything for them.

There's people in at least one party who talk about problems like this, and given that party is the only one that has taken any kind of health care policy seriously for longer than the lifetime of this forum, and has at least some modest achievement to show for it during the narrow window they've had essential control of national institutions, there's reason to take that at face value.

And while various poll access restriction measures are an injustice one could almost think is intentionally targeted at black people, I imagine those obstacles aside they'd be as free and capable of conscientiously assigning their votes as anyone else.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#87

Post by gruez »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #75
nceqs3 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly stupid comment. Net price in Humalog has decreased since 2014 [0]. The PBMs jack up the list price so they can get their fat rebates. [0] = https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/25/eli-lilly-discloses-pricing-... .

Eli Lilly's profit margin is double digit, usually around 20%. Managed care organizations (insurance companies), which own the PBMs, have profit margins of ~5% or less.

That doesn't seem too strange when you consider that those two types of companies have different operating models. A drug company is in the business of taking relatively cheap goods and converting them to very expensive goods, in other words adding a lot of value. A insurance company/PBM is mostly in the business of skimming a percentage off transactions.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#88

Post by nceqs3 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #35
pope_meat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wall Street Smart Genius types have long held that curing disease is bad business, managing symptoms over the entire lifetime allows them to extract more capital out of the cattle. So, if you're looking to cure something you're going to struggle to find funding. Don't worry though, the economy will survive.

I wonder how the Hep C cures, COVID vaccines, shingles vaccine, HPV vaccines, and other cures got funding over the past 2 decades.

People love to bash big pharma, until they get cancer...

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#89

Post by Maken »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #35
pope_meat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wall Street Smart Genius types have long held that curing disease is bad business, managing symptoms over the entire lifetime allows them to extract more capital out of the cattle. So, if you're looking to cure something you're going to struggle to find funding. Don't worry though, the economy will survive.

I wonder how the Hep C cures, COVID vaccines, shingles vaccine, HPV vaccines, and other cures got funding over the past 2 decades.

Public funding.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#90

Post by pmichaud »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #43
birdyrooster wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found your problem: "African American adults are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes by a physician." Given that the middle class is very white and employed with insurance coverage, it virtually doesn't affect white people. Our politics takes black people's votes for granted and don't do anything for them.

Diabetes rates for blacks is 11.7% vs. 7.5% for whites. That is a ~60% increase, but it's hardly an issue that only affects black voters.

Also worth noting that it's 11.7% of about 14% vs 7.5% of about 76%, so in absolute terms there are way more white diabetics than black diabetics.
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