Remember when they told us ObamaCare would make health care more affordable?
Th only cost factor that went down for most (initially) were the monthly premiums. But many of us said back then that the American people were about to learn the definitions for "deductible" and "out-of-pocket maximum". Sadly, too many are plainly stupid or indifferent to have cared.
And, except for Type 1 people, it’s very questionable just how much, if any, Insulin is even needed.
Unfortunately, my son is Type 1. A bottle of his insulin is $289 retail. He uses a bottle every 10 days.
Really STOOOOOPID of Big Pharma if true as it is just going to fuel the drive for socialized medicine.
Get .gov out of college and healthcare, prices will fall dramatically. But, more importantly live a healthy lifestyle, watch your carbs, eat fat and move.
I’m no expert, but I think in the facts that many users pay very little of the price themselves and the regulatory difficulty of introducing products to compete with the existing insulins we can find much of the answer.
When I first became diabetic, the insulins were derived from cows and pigs, insurance didn’t cover them, and so they cost about eight dollars a bottle. Before the 1980s were over they had introduced a new insulin called Humulin, which was made from genetically engineered bacteria and was identical chemically to human insulin. It cost about $16. In the 1990s, IIRC, new insulins were introduced that were genuinely better — Humalog, which started to take effect a mere five minutes or so after injection (unlike the half hour when it even started to take effect with the earlier insulins), and Lantus, which releases smoothly overnight, when insulin is needed but you can’t get up to inject it. This is where the combination of patient copay and insurance payment leads to “prices” of $250, although with my very good health insurance my copay is only $25, for a bottle of insulin (I take two types) that lasts about six weeks, It seems like more competition could help me, but it also seems it doesn’t happen.
It has nothing to do with ObamaCare....
It has everything to do with CEO’s simply raising commodity drug prices once they have ensured a monopoly... Obamacare has NOTHING to do with this crap..
The CEO’s who do this crap should be impaled and their carcasses left to rot..
Its beyond time that the voting public realized that Pharma money to politicians is far dirtier than tobacco company cash ever was.. and anyone taking it should INSTANTLY be unelectable again.
Insulin is up to 4 or 5 times more expensive in the USA than other countries, like Canada and UK. Other drugs are similarly marked up, and we continue to allow the pharmaceutical companies to gouge us.
Just another way we "rich, capitalist American pigs" subsidize the rest of the world's socialism. The UN, NATO, horrible trade deals, theft of our technology and intellectual property, acting as the world's police, foreign aid, inflated drug prices, illegal immigrants and refugees stealing our social support services, climate change, and more. We are being bled dry, and unless people wake up soon, it will be too late to save us.
Supply and demand.
Doubled in price? So did a pint of lager, an order of wings, and lots of other stuff!
Step 1 - give the drug free to all illegals and medicaid folks.
Step 2 - Charge everyone else more to cover step 1.
Not difficult to understand at all.
So has the price of a can of corn. So has our electric bill. So has lots of things except the paycheck.
15% annual compound interest rate. 10% ish over the 30 year mortgage rate and 12% is over the 10 year treasury.
Rumor is that the patent for synthetic insulin production was transferred to NovoNordisk for $1.
Don’t know if that is true. I know that the IP for AZT was transferred to Pfizer for free.