Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 273 posts

Re: Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

#241

Post by BurningFrog »

mig39 wrote: post #215
BurningFrog wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insulin is hyper regulated in the US. There is no free market for insulin.

Is it significantly cheaper in other jurisdictions? Like Canada?

That's what I've heard, though I don't any data to show.

In general all medications are the most expensive in the US, often by a lot. For two main reasons:

1. All other countries are to some extent "free riding" on the US market, and refusing to pay full price.

2. The FDA is doesn't approve a lot of things. So many cheap foreign medications are illegal to import. I heard that many forms of insulin are in this group.

Re: Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

#242

Post by xyzzyz »

rayiner wrote: post #212
arcticbull wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its easy to point at what doesn't work well, there's tons and tons of things that work great that nobody talks about. Municipal broadband: the best broadband in the entire United States is provided by the municipality of Chattanooga. [1] Post: The USPS is the most trusted brand in the United States, above FedEx and UPS. [2] Transit: The New York City Subway is the 3rd largest metro rail system on earth after London a…

> Transit: The New York City Subway is the 3rd largest metro rail system on earth after London and Guangzhou It’s also the worst large metro system, by timeliness and reliability, in the world, despite being very well funded. People in the rest of the country aren’t exactly unaware of New York. But its transit, housing, and public school systems are a poster child for how government-run services are terrible, even wh…

> It’s also the worst large metro system, by timeliness and reliability, in the world, despite being very well funded.

You forgot to mention cleanliness, comfort, and safety, where it also is just atrocious compared to other metro systems outside US.

Praising NYC subway for being really big sounds to me similar to Soviet Union boasting how many tons of steel it produced. It sure did, but its citizens would have preferred instead to get something other than 1000 additional tanks.

Re: Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

#243

Post by basch »

projektfu wrote: post #240
basch wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>insulin glargine, are off patent now. In the U.S.A. is expected to expire on 2027-07-05. How did something invented in 1994/2000, get patented in 2009? https://patents.google.com/patent/US8048854B2/en%3C/

That's a different molecule. It's been animated.

Do they still make/prescribe the non animated one? Did it just disappear off the market?

Re: Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

#244

Post by skyyler »

LarryMullins wrote: post #195
skyyler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could someone against the idea of providing food for children at school explain their position? I'm interested to hear why you think children should go hungry if their parents don't give them cash to bring to school.

The premise is bullshit, schools in America always give the kids lunch whether or not they have money that day. Kids who forget their money still get fed, the schools insist on it. Even if the kid pleads that he's just not hungry today, the school will put a tray of in front of him anyway. If the kid isn't getting free lunches already through the National School Lunch Act (which gives free or reduced price lunches to…

Maybe things are different now, but several times between 2000 and 2007 in the USA I was denied a lunch because my lunch debt was greater than $20.

Re: Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

#245

Post by jmeister »

basch wrote: post #227
olliej wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Every kind of insulin is more expensive in the US than _every_ other country. It's not just old stuff is "cheap", new stuff is expensive. It's old stuff is more expensive in the US, new stuff is more expensive in the US. Average prices per "standard unit" * Rapid acting: $120 (US) vs $13.50 (JP) * Rapid-int (?) acting: $107(US) vs. $13 (JP) * Short-acting: $87 (US) vs $19 (FR) * Short-int a…

Novolin/ReliOn is nowhere near that expensive. I skimmed it, but report you are citing appears to be averaging the price of insulin types. So if there is a cheap rapid and an expensive rapid, it ignores that somebody can buy the cheap one. That averaging distorts the price of available traditional insulin dramatically. https://www.goodrx.com/healthcare-access/research/how-much-d... It is more expensive in the United…

Thank you for your informative comments on this thread.

Re: Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

#246

Post by dmitriid »

basch wrote: post #202
dmitriid wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what level should the government step in and subsidize or control this quality of life improvement? At what level should its creators be rewarded? You assume that creators are rewarded. In Sweden you get the insulin and pens for free (that is, you've paid for it with your taxes).

And it was invented there? When I say create I mean discovered not manufactured. The R&D. And the answer/solution is somewhere in the realm of a public/private hybrid, where the government is funding short term expensive, long tail benefit research.

> And it was invented there?

This is beside the point. You pay for insulin, but with taxes. In return, you don't have to deal with "do I eat or do I get insulin".

> When I say create I mean discovered not manufactured. The R&D.

The question remains: are the creators actually rewarded?

In the US most R&D now is performed by small companies, government entities, or with government money. Large companies buy this research cheap and profit from it immensely. There are cases when all new drugs that appear on the market are based on public government-funded research.

The amount of revenue that goes back into R&D decreased while revenues increased.

More data here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57126

Re: Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

#248

Post by komali2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #234
Spooky23 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you think is paying now? States are spending billions on it through Medicaid cost share. A state like California with a contract manufacturer would probably break even on the insulin and save billions for reduced complications. Poor people with diabetes are frequent fliers for ER admissions. The cost of one ER visit is probably close to annual insulin cost.

> Who do you think is paying now? It'll cost even more when the government takes it over. There's a reason why central economic planning results in poverty. Instead, reduce the regulation and laws and interference by the government so that competitors can sprout.

Why make the jump directly to central economic planning? I mean what it sounds like you're saying is communism is when the government buys things? So not a big fan of like, roads?

Are you arguing in favor for no government regulations whatsoever? Are you arguing for cartel state?

Re: Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own

#250

Post by projektfu »

basch wrote: post #243
projektfu wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a different molecule. It's been animated.

Do they still make/prescribe the non animated one? Did it just disappear off the market?

I think that's just a Wikipedia red herring. I'm not sure the amidated glargine has been marketed.
Post reply on HN