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

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

#31

Post by ceejayoz »

HWR_14 wrote: post #10
peyton wrote: post #2

> because of the Senate’s arcane rules, they could not establish the same cap for private insurance It looks like one party tried to get this done in reconciliation. If so, blaming “arcane rules” is slanted and makes me wonder what other information the author is twisting.

The rules of reconciliation are indeed arcane. There is a Senate Parliamentarian who makes calls on interpretations because the details are so convoluted. Sure, at a high level it's simple. But so is "crawl the internet, make a database and match keywords from requests to a ranked list of results."

> There is a Senate Parliamentarian who makes calls on interpretations

Sorta. They can be fired at will (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/05/08/k...) and they're making advisories, which the Senate can just... overrule.

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

#32

Post by LarryMullins »

mgarfias wrote: post #29

Ok. What KIND of insulin? The old school stuff sux

AFAIK the old school stuff (e.g. synthetic human insulin) is cheap, so I assume that's not the sort they're talking about. Probably they're talking about analogue insulin, which is very expensive.

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

#33

Post by ceejayoz »

msla wrote: post #22
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #5

[flagged]

This isn't Socialism, it's regulated Capitalism, akin to the Nordic Model.

"The Nordic Model isn't socialism!"

"OK, so let's implement their policies."

"No, that's socialism!"

(cribbed from a meme; https://twitter.com/pty/status/1109687920938541057)

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

#34

Post by sgt101 »

yonran wrote: post #30
jfghi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience at least, yes, there are many types. However, a few types are remarkably common and overpriced. In terms of a tech metaphor, it’d be like making Ubuntu and Windows 10 available for all after having them severely restricted. And yes, I know Ubuntu is free, but the point was to demonstrate how common the most popular insulins are.

Are the popular types of insulin still under patent, and if so, how is California’s initiative a solution? Are they hoping to license the necessary patents?

Here you go :

https://haiweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/HAI_ACCISS_fac...

It looks like most patents are expired. I hope this should open the way for effective analogue insulin to be manufactured generically.

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

#35

Post by zajio1am »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> when are they going to understand that the same solution can be applied to housing and other problems?

Housing problem is not an economic problem, it is an effect of vetocracy of city councils and activist groups.

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

#36

Post by rayiner »

Reflecting a common theme in our healthcare system, the problem of insulin costs is very unevenly distributed: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/out-of-pocket-spen....

About 3 in 4 enrollees in ACA plans that use insulin pay $35/month or less out of pocket. For people with private insurance, 4 in 5 pay $35/month or less.

The biggest problem seems to be too many plans, too many choices, and too many ways to fall through the cracks.

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

#38

Post by skybrian »

jeffbee wrote: post #26
skybrian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sweeping a lot of problems under the rug. Many US governments are so disfunctional that it's unclear that they could succeed at European-style public housing. An analogy: just because Japan has a very good high-speed rail network doesn't imply that a new one will succeed in the US. In California it's an open question whether it's going to succeed in the end. You can't assume the US way of doing things like th…

California has a vast and robust sprawling network of socialized transportation, the budget for which has doubled in the past 2 years to consume 7% of the annual state budget. Think I am talking about high speed rail? No, just the freeway department, which spends 40x more every year and the economic sustainability of which is never even obliquely questioned. In short, California has plenty of appetite for socialism,…

Okay, but generic arguments of this sort won't tell us whether any particular project will succeed. It's going to depend on local conditions.

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

#39

Post by toomanyrichies »

Reading these comments, I learned about human analog insulin and how it's considered more modern than older, off-patent versions. I was wondering about human analog insulin's patent status, and from here [1] I learned about the practice of patent ever-greening.[2]

TL;DR: "Evergreening is any of various legal, business, and technological strategies by which producers (often pharmaceutical companies) extend the lifetime of their patents that are about to expire in order to retain revenues from them. Often the practice includes taking out new patents (for example over associated delivery systems or new pharmaceutical mixtures), or by buying out or frustrating competitors, for longer periods of time than would normally be permissible under the law."

A relevant quote from the Wikipedia article: "In one study of the prescription drug market, Feldman found that 78% of new patents associated with prescription drugs were for existing drugs."

Depressing AF...

1. https://www.t1international.com/blog/2019/01/20/why-insulin-...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening

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

#40

Post by XMPPwocky »

skyyler wrote: post #11
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

I think I can do a decent job of steel-manning this- I might be a bit unfair because I think it's rather morally reprehensible and deeply harmful (and also suspect these are only the stated motives of folks pushing this idea), but I can try.

Everybody generally agrees children going hungry is bad. What we're really arguing about is whether the government should be spending taxpayer funds on feeding them.

In fact, because the overwhelming majority of people see child hunger as bad, private charity would step in to feed those kids who aren't fed by the state. This is better in two ways: first, it's more voluntary (instead of "donations" being compelled by force), and second, private (market-driven) charity can be more efficient than a state monopoly.

So it's not that kids should go hungry, and I (n.b. this is me in-character!) am a bit surprised that you think I seriously believe that. Rather, kids necessarily go hungry if nobody feeds them, and the debate (OOC: note i'm deliberately reframing the harm here as a natural thing!) is really over who should step in if the parents, the natural caretakers, aren't able to support their child. Should the government use taxpayer funds to do so, or is voluntary charity a better option for everybody?

Additionally, there's a moral hazard here where the state effectively subsidizes having kids that a parent might not be able to take care of on their own.

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