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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

#181

Post by sparrish »

cestith wrote: post #124
hooande wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is very true. prices of name brand insulin need to come down, but there is a low cost option available for those that need it

Patient outcomes for the insulin aspart pens and the vials of generic insulin at Walmart are so different that many doctors refuse to prescribe the cheap stuff except as a very last resort. There's no simply substituting. These are two different brands of a generic statin pill or something. Although it's all insulin, these are very different drugs. The dosages for the same insulin in the same patient can vary, and th…

Novolin is available as a pen without prescription. Costs a bit more ($45 for 5 pens).

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

#182

Post by coliveira »

pm90 wrote: post #167
coliveira wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress has been bought by big pharma. There is nothing the American people can do at this point other than revolting on the streets.

I mean, that’s not nothing. Maybe not revolt, but organize, pressure sitting politicians and encourage better candidates to run. Americans vilify their politicians and then expect that somehow really “good” people will get into that profession. I don’t get it…

What I mean is that traditional avenues for change have been closed by the pharma industry lobby. It is not very different from the situation with the oil industry. The traditional political system has been corrupted by these industry forces, which support both parties.

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

#183

Post by anchpop »

moomin wrote: post #157
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.

I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time someone has tried to solve America’s political problems with tech.

Solving america’s problems with tech has a pretty good success rate. We tried addressing covid with social solutions (social distancing, self-quarantine, etc) and it was generally a complete failure in comparison to the technological solution (mrna vaccinations)

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

#184

Post by bko »

tsimionescu wrote: post #180
bko wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price controls don't work. This is a solved problem and understood by nearly all economists. They lead to over/under production, huge waste, less efficiency and regulatory capture. The question is why no one is calling for price controls for other products that are produced in a relatively free market. Then ask yourself whats different about the market for insulin that prevents price competition. Using "fixed" prices…

The way price controls are achieved for medicine in the first world is through negotiation between the state public Healthcare system and pharma companies. This actually, provably works, and has worked for decades, and is much more efficient than in the US in fact - both in terms of healthcare outcomes, and Healthcare costs.

I guess you have a lot more faith in "state public Healthcare system". Many comments were about how corrupt the politicians that led to this system were, so I imagine they would be equally as corrupt when they're "setting prices".

The alternative would be to allow people to break the third party payer system and allow people to buy and import drugs from whomever they want. You can do this now on the grey market, but it would be great if it were legalized. Then you can probably get it for the same price as any other country, probably even lower. If you want, you can have the state cut every insulin user a check for $10 a year or whatever it would cost in a free market

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

#185

Post by adventured »

dv_dt wrote: post #104
api wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US health care system combines everything bad about government-run health care (slow progress due to heavy regulation, layers of bureaucracy, government-enforced drug monopolies) with everything bad about free-enterprise health care (inequality, market price fixing, uneven quality, lots of quackery at the edges of regulation). We need to pick something. If we're going the free enterprise way we need competition,…

Every time I’ve dug into it, modern nations which enjoy a much lower cost per capita coverage (which the US is a major outlier) basically have a government mechanism to set prices for drugs and health services. There are no free market health systems in leading economic nations (unless maybe you take a very small niche corner of the systems)

> There are no free market health systems in leading economic nations

That also does not exist in the US and hasn't in more than half a century. The US could hardly be any further away from a free market in healthcare. It's hyper regulated, and hyper dominated by government programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and dozens of other programs and agencies).

The US healthcare system is controlled top to bottom by rigid, strict government regulations and oversight. It's the way it is precisely because there is no free market at all. The corporatist interests like it just the way it is, and work with the politicians to constantly maintain that highly regulated environment: it's regulated in their favor, exclusionary of nearly all potential competition. And it's insanely expensive to try to start anything in healthcare, which favors the incumbent further.

Try starting a hospital or opening a clinic. Try becoming a doctor. Try getting a drug to market. Try getting a medtech device to market. Hyper regulation every direction you look.

Free market? Ha.

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

#186

Post by ipsum2 »

gentleman11 wrote: post #36
f6v wrote: post #17

As someone who had to create transgenic E.coli in a lab, I admire the effort. It’s hard to get it right, especially when trying to make bacteria produce stuff for you. However, it feels like a huge step backward. Imagine you couldn’t afford to buy a piece of bread. Instead, you need to grow your own grains and build a windmill first. Sounds ridiculous in 2021.

My wife bakes bread almost every day and grows her own yeast. She loves it and the bread is fantastic. What is so ridiculous?

The parent mentioned growing their own grain, which is substantially more difficult (planting, harvesting, milling) than growing your own yeast.

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

#187

Post by RHSeeger »

burkaman wrote: post #170
RHSeeger wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do have type 1 diabetes, and I lived on R/L for over a decade. The point being made here is > The high price of tier 1 insulins is killing people Is (more or less) a lie. While > The high price of tier 1 insulins is making people's lives considerably worse and their diabetes harder to manage. Is (more or less) true. When you try to push for change and use, as part of your argument, a lie, you sabotage yourself. Peo…

It is not a lie if you think about real human behavior, rather than a theoretical rational automaton. There are real, documented cases of people who were prescribed insulin they could not afford, tried to ration it, and died as a direct result. Maybe their doctor told them not to use it, or they didn't live near a Walmart, or they didn't know it existed. Maybe they tried the Walmart stuff and almost died because it's…

Correction

> One in four patients say they’ve skimped on insulin because of high cost

> say they've

^ is the key component. I expect the vast majority of those people had a choice, and they chose not to take it. A poor choice, and a choice they shouldn't have to make, but a choice nonetheless.

The point is, if you're going to fight for positive change, use an argument that can't be trivially dismissed because it isn't true. Fight effectively.

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

#188

Post by rootusrootus »

margalabargala wrote: post #64
gentleman11 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife bakes bread almost every day and grows her own yeast. She loves it and the bread is fantastic. What is so ridiculous?

Growing enough viable yeast to bake 10 loaves of bread is orders of magnitude simpler than growing, harvesting, threshing, and milling enough grain to bake 10 loaves of bread.

It can as simple as doing nothing. You can start your own sourdough at home completely from scratch, and do nothing but wait for the yeast to show up.

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

#189

Post by dv_dt »

adventured wrote: post #185
dv_dt wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I’ve dug into it, modern nations which enjoy a much lower cost per capita coverage (which the US is a major outlier) basically have a government mechanism to set prices for drugs and health services. There are no free market health systems in leading economic nations (unless maybe you take a very small niche corner of the systems)

> There are no free market health systems in leading economic nations That also does not exist in the US and hasn't in more than half a century. The US could hardly be any further away from a free market in healthcare. It's hyper regulated, and hyper dominated by government programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and dozens of other programs and agencies). The US healthcare system is controlled top to bottom by rigid, strict g…

My point is that it's seems a little optimistic to think that a free market for healthcare is an adequate solution, given that no free market healthcare system exists anywhere at scale. I think some markets are simply inappropriate for free markets - particularly one where services are by definition specialized and market feedback involves failures in critical life risking situations.

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

#190

Post by burkaman »

RHSeeger wrote: post #187
burkaman wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a lie if you think about real human behavior, rather than a theoretical rational automaton. There are real, documented cases of people who were prescribed insulin they could not afford, tried to ration it, and died as a direct result. Maybe their doctor told them not to use it, or they didn't live near a Walmart, or they didn't know it existed. Maybe they tried the Walmart stuff and almost died because it's…

Correction > One in four patients say they’ve skimped on insulin because of high cost > say they've ^ is the key component. I expect the vast majority of those people had a choice, and they chose not to take it. A poor choice, and a choice they shouldn't have to make, but a choice nonetheless. The point is, if you're going to fight for positive change, use an argument that can't be trivially dismissed because it isn'…

Yes, why did they choose not to take it? Try to empathize with these people. Why did they do something so dangerous? Then follow it one step further. In the case of those that died, why did they die? What factors contributed to their death? If the price of insulin had been lower, and everything else was the same, would they have died?

I would argue these two statements are equivalent:

- My patient was killed by the high price of insulin.

- If the price of insulin had been lower, my patient would still be alive.

I suspect that you accept the second statement, but not the first. What's the difference?

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