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Insulin is the wrong drug to choose for this argument, because no one actually makes the "sold the patent for a dollar" formulation anymore.
Use epipens as an outrage tool, instead. We (the US taxpayer) actually paid for the development of this technology in full during the cold war. It's an automatic injector with epinephrine in it. Epinephrine itselfhas been in mass production for more than a century. Neither the injector nor the drug are expensive to produce. There are no "paying back the expensive costs to develop" arguments that apply in any way.
Somehow an epipen is a couple of hundred dollars in the US. Because "fuck you" that's why.
I mean Americans are to blame for American problems. I'd say voting is part of the problem. I think the biggest problem is your 2 party system. you can barely call something a democracy of you only have 2 choices.
We have one choice masquerading as two choices.
Yes on certain matters the two parties disagree, but on most matters Especially ones that involve them getting a kickback they dont disagree behind closed doors they absolutely agree, its how we have ghouls like Pelosi and McConnell still around
Fun fact: It wasn't a single guy, it was a team at the University of Toronto and they didn't invent Insuling. They discovered Insulin. It's a naturally produced Hormone in the body animals and humans.
Frank Banting and Charles Best extracted and isolated Insulin form an animal pancreas in 1921.
And a year later a Type 1 Diabetic named Leonard Thompson was the first patient to get the treatment at 13 years old. Which unfortunately gave him an allergic reaction, probably because of some impurities in the insuling. Which helped them develop a way to concentrate the extract better, where he went on a two week daily injection routine that improved his health tremendously.
A year later, Frederick Banting and John Macleod, who led the project at the University, received the Nobel Price in Medicine for this discovery.
The Team sold the patent to the University of Toronto for $1 so it would be widely available and remained affordable.
Until that point getting the diagnose of Diabetes, was basically being told, you get a few weeks to live. Then 14 year old Leonard died at the age of 26, due to pneumonia. The Insulin literally saved his life at that point in time.
The freaky part is, that is still not the insulin we use today. The stuff we use today is created artifically, instead of extracted from pigs. It is incredibly much easier, quicker and cheaper to produce, while also being way more effective! It's effects kick in sooner and you need less of it. You don't need to extract it from a glass vial into a syringe anymore, that would need to be washed with boiling water to sterilize before every use, but they come in ready made sterile pens with single use needles and all that good stuff.
I'm actually not sure what happened to the patent. But unfortunately, since it doesn't even remotely involve the same process anymore, I don't think it's relevant for todays market at all.
Btw as a european with healthcare, I pay pennys on the dime for the stuff. It doesn't even register in my banking records it's that cheap
The high costs are purely american greed.
The funny part is y'all sit there and just take it while doing nothing productive to get a working system in place. But the stock price looks good, that helps people so much.. capitalist idiots.
I have had multiple US tourist tell me how universal medicare is bad and for profit is good (much nicer than what they said). A good portion would refuse any other way.
Medicare for all. Our healthcare system is a God damn abomination. A fucking ABOMINATION. We are some of the most propagandized people on the planet. The rich just keep taking more and more. They do not give a single fuck if regular people live or die. We need a revolution. Nothing else will do. Healthcare is a human right. But not here.
Some one bought it and they can control the price. The US medical system isn't 100% of the blame. Also no Federal Price Regulations, Oligopoly Market: Three major companies—Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi—control more than 90% of the U.S. insulin market. Instead of competing to lower costs are also to blame.
I think Europe should set up EUaid where we establish new biochemistry startups and send insulin to America for free, as charity. Like we do for developing nations.
We might not like Americans much right now, but imo America is a low-key humanitarian crisis.
My fathers Cancer medicine is $16k a bottle. I work extra hours to help him pay for it. My father was all excited when Trump said he was going to slash medicine prices by 85% what a f*cking joke that was...
I dunno he has said so much bs I can't even keep up. Like my Dad is all excited about this $5k check he's supposed to get if the Republicans keep the senate/house. I'm like Dad this dude is a pathological liar you can't believe anything he says...poor Dad
It's wild that the parents that told us to never believe anyone on the internet and talked about stranger danger now believes anything this conman says. Guess they think if someone is on TV they're trustworthy, no matter what they do to prove otherwise.
Nah not poor dad. He is just as complicit. So is mine. It’s a hard fact but it’s true. People in this country need to learn their actions have consequences.
The only thing I’ve ever believed that Trump said was recently in a speech at a rally he said “I could get get up here and say the dumbest things and you all would clap and cheer me on anyway” crowd begins clapping and cheering.
People talking about the US here should realize that this study is global. The study indicated that this 40 million is predominantly in Africa and Asia. The American Diabetes Association estimates that about 85% of the US’s 40 million diabetics have stable access to insulin without cost-related rationing. Not ideal, but the study is people that straight up don’t have insulin at all and who are mostly in the global south
I hate the pharmaceutical industry as much as anyone but this is the same misleading narrative that gets posted once a month. It’s like saying painkillers come from tree bark but now we all have to pay hundreds for painkillers. The industry has moved way beyond his patent for insulin. His style of insulin may still be available but it’s nowhere near as safe, effective, or reliable than glp-1’s. They aren’t “selling” the medicine he invented for millions, they’re selling modern medicine that does the same thing better for millions
And that fact itself is wild. Check the wrong box? Pick the wrong plan that is the same price as the plan you needed? Sorry, try again next time because you’re dead.
Beyond that, there are so many stupid fuck ups in our system. When choosing state subsidized insurance, the insurance website will tell me this plan covers this provider. Then I choose it because I want to keep my doctors. I go to an appointment, am seen by my usual doctor and then a month later they tell me it was never covered by my insurance and I now owe them 2,000 dollars.
So I change my insurance and make sure it's taken by my doctors through verifying with the website and making several phone calls. Then I go to fill my prescriptions and my pharmacy no longer takes my insurance. The pharmacy tech tells me to try a different place, she thinks they take it. I message all my docs, ask them to send my prescriptions there, they don't take it. So now I'm doing research, I'm calling numbers from the back of cards, I'm visiting my insurance website and there is only one pharmacy within miles of me that takes my insurance. I move my prescriptions again. I call them they say they probably take my insurance, but they need to see my card. I give the info to them over the phone. No plans recognized. I double check to make sure I'm not crazy, this is the ONLY place that will take my insurance, so I go in person so we can troubleshoot this together. MY INSURANCE COMPANY PRINTED MY MEMBER ID INCORRECTLY ON MY CARD.
And apparently it's a common enough thing that the experienced pharmacist, not the tech, the actual pharmacist just started plugging numbers in to figure out which one was actually correct and he nailed it. If that experienced pharmacist hadn't been working that day and didn't just know from experience that this gets fucked up sometimes and what to do about it, I really would have been SOL and had to have all of my prescriptions mailed to me if I wanted them covered or paid out of pocket for them.
And I'm a 31 year old woman with mild health issues. I'm computer savvy, I have enough of an income cushion that I could get my meds with a GoodRX coupon in the meantime, but what about people who need life sustaining meds? I didn't have a pharmacy for almost 2 months while I tried to sort this out and I could never get through to a person at my insurance company.
You guys are idiots. Traditional insulin is still pretty cheap but nobody wants it. We want synthetic products with much better efficacy and comfort features. I've been a T2D for over 30 years. That doesn't mean the costs don't suck, but this meme is definitely misleading.
I'm in Ireland. We just don't pay insulin at all. I get my insulin pens and needles and bloo strips and all the rest for free. Even my diabetic clinics and endocrinologist is free as a part of the Long-term Illness scheme.
I know Europeans are always winding up Americans about their free healthcare, but there is usually more nuance than that regarding what is covered, insurance responsibilities, etc. but for diabetes in Ireland, that shit is just straight up free.
It's not even if healthcare is free or not. We in the Netherlands have a privatized healthcare system too, like the US. However we have a mendetory and heavily regulated health insurance system so they cannot pull any evil trickery like in the US.
You do, but your healthcare system also has its oddities. I lived in Schiedam until about 6 months ago. I was paying 200 Euro a month for insurance, and because of deductibles had to essentially pay for my first months prescriptions up front every January, and the insurance only covered my insulin, not my needles, test strips, lancettes, blood machine, etc. Those had to be purchased from a shop. Not even from the pharmacy.
The "my gp says im not allowed to see a specialist" thing is also very strange.
So most type 1 diabetics I know in the US are using CGMs and insulin pumps. This seems to be something that is being adopted in Europe but is definitely taking longer.
Diabetics CAN get older types of insulin for a lot cheaper and use traditional glucose monitoring and insulin delivery. But companies keep making better insulin compounds and better methods of delivery. These new methods are protected by patent law and therefore much more expensive. They also significantly improve quality of life.
Without the patent protection and high cost being paid in the American market I wonder if these newer methods would be profitable enough to even warrant the innovation.
I can get CGMs and pumps. New t1 diabetics almost all get them by default. My nephew has both as he is a child. I choose not to because I have been a diabetic for 30 years and don't feel like changing my entire life's rhythm.
As for insulin types, yes, I have changed formulation a number of times as better ones are introduced.
Yes, I know they are available there now. But there was a lag between when they came out originally and when Europe started using them.
Now it is much more common to see newer pumps hit Europe first due to the US FDA requiring a lot more testing before they release it in the US.
But it’s still primarily US companies making these devices and selling them to Europe knowing that they’ll then make more money selling them in the US.
None of this is to say the US is over here just batting a thousand. I am positing the question about whether they would continue to make newer and better monitors, pumps, and insulin if the US were to change the program.
This isn't exactly accurate. The patent that was sold in 1923 was for insulin derived from animals. It took the death of 50,000 animals to produce 1 kg of insulin which only supplies about 1000 people with their annual insulin needs. Today, we would need to annually kill 50 billion animals to supply the world's insulin users.
We have long since abandoned animal insulin because of its inefficiency and because it wasn't as compatible with humans. All the insulin used today is synthetic human insulin.
So the version given away really is available for everyone, but the standard of living is so much higher in the US, nowadays, that most people do not want it even for free.
This isn't about who is voted for or anything to do with capitalism. When something new is made, it is difficult to invent it at all, and it is often more expensive than the previous version. This is going to happen over and over so long as medical technology keeps improving.
In the steady state, there is always going to be an old, cheap solution that is so so, and a new, shiny solution that is expensive.
People do not want to believe that, but it is just how technology growth works. There is no way around it.
Now, today's new and shiny will, in 30+ years, become the old, cheap thing. So, we could all be better off if we could accept a new thing being expensive and rare for its first thirty years, and only things from 1996 and earlier are so cheap as to be almost free.
Not quite. The insulin he made is not what modern diabetics use. Companies developed fast acting insulin and patentented the delivery systems which is the issue. They charge out the ass for $1 of materials that is required for life. At the same time the average diabetic seems to be too dumb to look into this and realize you can still get generic slower insulin for $25 a bottle at Walmart. You have to regulate you diet more but you are alive. As opposed to fast acting that basically let's them eat like a normal person.
Source girlfriend is diabetic, have to grab Walmart vioes on vacation if she loses her good stuff.
Yea my buddy's 22 year old son is diabetic and he has accrued absolute gobs of medical debt from that and epilepsy over his life. I hear him talk sometimes about the cost of a pump. Now, it's fancy and anticipates his spikes and stuff like that, but dang. I'm sure it hurts when his kid, being young and dumb and still fighting that inate young-man-nothing-can-kill-me attitude and he drops it and it breaks...
Even with insurance it's not particularly cheap. If someone was living paycheck to paycheck, that $20 a month if you have decent insurance is a lot. Not to mention the cost of test strips, dosage needles, or testing needles.
The famous 1 dollar patent that University of Toronto has, is for very specifically that first version of insulin, which effectively isn’t used anymore. Various others have reworked the formula and hold their own patents on their own versions. Which does mean that it doesn’t really offer any real control over the market.
There are various cheaper varieties of insulin (and the effectiveness can vary), but the dominant suppliers are three companies who mostly act in collusion regarding prices. And much like Walmart vs a local grocery, they’re able to leverage massive international purchasing power to largely force suppliers of the materials to fulfill them as a priority, or make it prohibitively expensive for competition. And they can also push (unless regulated) pharmacies to only carry their version by threatening to withhold their entire catalog.
That said, even from those companies, it’s exponentially cheaper anywhere but the US (and maybe a handful of other countries). Which is down to a combination of lack of regulation in regards to price fixing and monopolies, and not treating it as an essential product, and also not having any sort of subsidy system,
An honest question regarding this. Can people just not buy insulin and then buy a needle and then use it on themselves. From my understanding and please correct me if I’m wrong much of the insulin cost is the delivery system not the actual insulin itself. Like I said I could be dramatically off but does just buying pure insulin cost a lot of money cause I know needles don’t but let me know.
You can do that. You can get a vial of novolin for 25 dollars and a pack of syringes for 15. The problem is that its really shitty insulin. It doesnt consistently affect your body which leads to dangerous high and low blood sugars. The only time I had a low blood sugar bad enough that i was unconscious was when I used novolin. Big pharma, for all their faults and profiteering, has made insulin much more usable and more consistent and better. Now, they sell those improved drugs at a premium in the states and for almost nothing in other countries. They say they have to do this because if they dont they wont have money to innovate more drugs. In my opinion it should just be government funded science without a profit motive but what do I know. In the case of insulin shortage, it has nothing to do with the patent. The big pharma companies have repurposed their manufacturing capabilities to make glp-1s
Jonas Salk only got the money because Polio killed FDR. And funding primarily came from an Roosevelt foundation (National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) and a private family, not the USG.
Edward Jenner, the man who came up with the original SP vax in 1796 was British and practicing in Brittan. Allan Watt Downie was one of the fathers of modren vaccines contributed to perfecting the vaccine in 1935. He was Scottish.
Neither of these vaccines were the result of USG funding, and even though the USG helped distribute the Polio vaccine, they ran into problems caused by their own anti communist amd pro evangelical christian propaganda which has long been pro individual determination at the cost of both the individual & society.
Funny thing is this meme is supposed to be a gotcha for capitalism, but is the opposite
Yes, you can go produce the old porcine insulin. But its so inferior, its like handing out free cardboard applicator tampons. People would rather bleed on the floor than use that trash.
The analog insulin are just lightyears better, research conducted because it had profit opportunity.
Insulin R, Insulin NPH and Insulin 70/30 are sold for under $25 without a prescription across the USA. The lancets, meters and syringes are also sold without a prescription.
Mark Cuban has been doing this for like a decade with his company Cost Plus Drugs. He sells generic medication at just over wholesale value and it’s a very successful company.
The US of A having a drug manufacturer cartel that prevents affordable insulin to be put on the market. The same insulin from the "Big Three" is affordable everywhere else.
Because the government is lax on their own rules when it comes to existing corporation because they hurl money at politicians. Existing pharmaceuticals would then hurl more money at the government to suddenly be hyper critical about regulations they’ve never cared about to get the start up company shut down.
Issue is that the insulin patent that was given up wasn’t the same insulin that patients usually use. The one he gave up is still on the market for a significantly lower price but it also doesn’t work as well.
Banting (a Canadian) refused to patent insulin, but essentially made it readily available by selling the rights to it for a dollar.
When I read this, I do wonder though - how many of these 40 million are Americans? Already, there are many cases of people not being able to afford insulin, and since Trump used an EA to remove the $35 price cap for Medicare beneficiaries that Biden introduced, it is only getting worse.
I mean it's already an issue now, there was a news report about a man that died because he had to choose a different type of insulin that he could afford. Which led to his death because not all insulins are the same.
Basic insulin is still very cheap… insurance and providers are pushing for “improved insulin” products… which is bs, but you can have a say over your medication choice
In Australia, Insulin sells for $7 a vial (unsubsidised). You must live in that country that considers sick people to be cash cows to be milked for everything they've got
If it were up to Novo Nordisk (one of the world largest makers of insulin) it would be almost free. They donate a large part of the profit they make from selling insulin to diabetes research. When asked why they donate so much in what ultimately is an effort to end the need for their most profitable drug their response was We are not an insulin company we are a drug company. We would love nothing more than for insulin to not be needed by anyone ever again. We will find another drug to sell, we will be fine. And sure enough not too long after that statement they came up with Ozempic which Im pretty sure will secure their bottom line just fine.
Exactly. Capitalism, like most systems, can only work if the government actually does its job instead of letting lobbying and corruption be rampant.
Capitalism works by competition. If one guy sells insuline for 1$ and another guy for 400$ then it's obvious who wins.
So the 400$ guy goes and asks the government to kneecap the 1$ guy.
No shit, but the way that those winners are meant to succeed is by offering the best deal, not by lobbying the government into kneecapping their opposition.
What most people call capitalism is really just the inherent rules of having a market. The way healthcare is deal with doesn't remotely resemble a functioning market.
As for the bullshit about the $1 vs $400 insulin, it's not the same insulin. Thus the newer stuff is under patent. You can get old school insulin pretty cheap. But if you want the new, better insulins, you will pay for it. The problem is lacking any semblance to a functioning market, what any two people pay for it is effectively arbitrary and nonsensical.
Yep, and there's the problem. Instead of the $400 guy trying to find a way to outdo the other.
PArt of the problem is I think these people get their wealth and get comfortable. They fight to protect there "easy" life, where they don't have to take risks, to keep innovating, and work to stay competitive.
A great example I like is Walt Disney. First to do audio with film, first to do animated color, first to do full length animation, first to do surround sound. All the other companies were trying to shoot him down, telling him it wouldn't work. Probably because it would upset there easy life. They had a tech that worked and didn't have to change it. But now look, we have industry standards cause of him.
(And side note, I think this has really been messed up because of our Copyright laws ... due to the Mouse, that now they are so long, companies can just buy up and ride a copyright, with little to no work)
Legit question: We have people with labs, making illegal substances. Often times, with excellent purity.. why have I not heard of black market insulin?!?
The reason the medical model sucks is because of capitalism. Capitalism is the reason the politicians are getting paid off to continue this system. It has everything to do with capitalism lol
Pfft. Don't hate the planet, hate hyper capitalism and rent seeking behavior. Making every aspect of reality a "for profit" exercise with the expectation of more more more every year. Companies don't innovate, their increased profits is directly through raising prices
Among the large group of friends I had back in college, two of them passed away due to diabetic comas, and one had to have his right leg amputated below the knee.
I'm certain all of that had to due to them getting regular access to insulin (which must have been hard to do back when you were a starving college student 😥)
The original insulin that was sold for a dollar was animal insulin (pork/beef). It's largely gone and most manufacturers discontinued it decades ago because human-sequence insulin replaced it, and in the US it hasn't been sold for years. A few countries still have small supplies of purified pork insulin. It was also less pure than modern versions and could cause allergic reactions, and supply was limited by how many animal pancreases were available.
The new modern insulin is owned by a different company and is a different patents.
The article is global and the population is mostly in Asia/Africa. America there’s a problem of 15% of diabetes needing to cost-ration insulin, but this study isn’t about that - it’s about people who don’t have insulin at all
40 million people with diabetes will be left without insulin. Then, they will end up in the ER with DKA, and cost the system millions. Astute logic here.
Type 1 here - you can still make the same insulin that was originally invented - its not sold by anyone today - we would consider it "dangerous" and never inject it today. What we have today is far far safer and effective. Think like you were buying an airline ticket - sure the bi-plane is cheaper, but there is a reason you didnt buy that trip!
The saddest part is that insulin isn’t optional for the people who depend on it. Nobody should have to choose between staying alive and being able to afford their medication
Thank eli Lilly. The same company that wants to buy the patent for nasal 5meo dmt which has been shown super effective in treating depression. They’re gonna make it so expensive that your depression gets worse befits go into crippling debt for a moment of relief.
When the Republican party came out with the High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) that includes a Health Savings Account (HSA) back in Jan 2004, the true costs caught many unsuspecting people off guard since this was supposed to be a cost saving option.
A co-worker friend of mine who had 2 young children thought it was a great idea to change to that plan when our company added it to our choices since he could bank money in the HSA for his family in case of future Health costs.
What he didn't bank on is that his own Type-1 diabetes insulin cost would rise from $50/month to $800/month that he had to pay until he met the yearly max prescription amount.
Then, one of his daughters broke an arm on a trampoline and that costs him about a grand for the co-pays and deductibles.
Needless to say, the next open season, he reverted back to standard Health insurance.
There's always a grift involved. Frankly, the HDHP is only useful to single, young, healthy people. Once you get married, have kids, incur a Health issue, then it ceases to be useful.
100% coverage automatically at the pharmacy counter for insulins, metformin, glyburide, glicazide, dapagliflozin, and empagliflozin. I live in Canada. 🇨🇦
Yeah. Insulin itself is cheap. All the fancy devices are what's driving costs up. We could regress in terms of technology and quality of care and have the cheap stuff again.
Regular old fashioned insulin derived from pig pancreas remains entirely affordable. $25/ 100 units. Available at Walmart and other pharmacies without a prescription.
The auto injector prescription dosed long acting synthetic blended with other medications products are the expensive ones.
Yeah the $1 patent part is real. Banting, Best, and Collip sold the original patent to the University of Toronto for a dollar each in 1923 so one company couldn’t lock it down and everyone could get access. That part of the post is solid.
The whole “capitalism said otherwise” part is the usual Reddit oversimplification though.
The original patent expired decades ago. What you’re paying for now isn’t 1923 cow pancreas extract. It’s modern analog insulins that act faster, last longer, and don’t cause as many weird reactions. Those improvements got their own patents (standard patent system, not some unique capitalism evil). Companies also did the usual evergreening games with minor tweaks to keep exclusivity going longer, which is shitty but not unique to insulin.
The actual price problem is mostly a US thing. Same companies sell the same insulin in Canada, UK, Europe, etc. for a fraction of the price. RAND studies show US list prices are like 5-10x higher than other rich countries. That’s because the US has this weird system of PBMs, insurers, rebates, no real negotiation by Medicare until recently, and almost zero true generic competition for biologics. Three companies (Lilly, Novo, Sanofi) dominate and used to just raise prices in lockstep.
In places with more competition or government negotiation, insulin is cheap. Even in the US, older human insulins and the new biosimilars/unbranded versions are way cheaper, and companies have started cutting list prices after the political heat.
The 40 million by 2030 study is real too, but it’s mostly about type 2 diabetes in Africa and Asia where supply chains and healthcare systems suck, not American list prices.
So yeah, the inventors tried to keep it accessible. Modern analog insulin is better (and more expensive to develop). The insane US prices are a regulatory/market failure specific to how America does pharma, not some inevitable “capitalism” result. If it was pure free market with easy generics and no middlemen skimming, prices would have crashed years ago like they do for other old drugs.
That’s because very few patients actually want that version of insulin. The modified stuff that absorbs steadily over a long period of time is much more effective and most certainly was not invented by this dude.
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