The REAL Reason Insulin Prices Are Falling
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- Опубліковано 3 кві 2023
- California will soon manufacture its own insulin and make it available nationwide - lowering prices for patients up to 90%.
It’s just one of several major new initiatives to take on pharma greed.
We dug into how bold government action is lowering insulin prices.
#insulin #pharma #greed
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The line that gets me is "we're working on lowering costs" as if insulin isn't one of the cheapest drugs to manufacture and it's such a burden for them to sell it at a more reasonable price and they just can't figure out how to put a different sticker on it. Then, as soon as government and market pressure kick in, it's like "Oh, look, we finally figured it out! We can sell it at 70% less now, what do you know? We're saving lives!"
Well they bought millions of price tags with the old price in advance, so it would‘ve been sad if they had to throw them all away, wouldn‘t it?
They just wanted to be eco friendly and not waste them. 🙃
@@blacky_Ninja humans are really wasteful and produce lots of CO2, you know what doesn't produce CO2? Corpses, no need to thank me
Fun thing is that you can produce insulin yourself... In fact there is a whole project that is dedicated to creating insulin as cheaply and as easily as possible without violating "copyrights", the only reason why you wanna avoid doing it is because you have to be **precise** and use **very** clean room(though it's faaar from impossible it's not easy either, and the price of mistake can be quite steep, but if you "keep at it" you are bound to make them, so it's ill advised if you have an alternative)... God it's just funny that like quarter of the global problems are due to some form of copyright and yet there are a lot of people defending it.
@@Shonicheck
Yay for capitalism 🙃
@@blacky_Ninja capitalism is great. Corporatism, not so much.
I worked in pharmacies back a little over 20 years ago, and insulin vials cost like $5 or $7 depending on if it was Humilin R or N.
And the cost of production has only gone DOWN since then.
Pharmaceutical companies really did just decide to kill thousands to make a few bucks. They may as well be arms manufacturers
They’re worse because they are supposed to make things that save lives and somehow managed to kill people with it.
absolutely disgusting and not surprising in a capitalist world zzzz
Price gouging nowadays is just called market strategy.
Arms manufacturers are way more humane than pharmaceutical companies.
@@davidchristian8447 I'd say they are about the same: their aim is to kill
That tweet was pretty genius, Just shows how easy it is to manipulate the markets
Your Honor, the prosecution for the FTC vs Elon Musk would like to enter exhibit A into evidence.
If it were easy, all drugs would have been affected.
@@watamatafoyu
It‘s easy for the stuff that‘s sold with unreasonably high prices. Which there are many of on the american market.
Capitalism is wild.
there is no evidence that tweet had anything to do with the stock price change that happened that day. The more likely explanation is the conclusion of a lawsuit that happened just the day before.
google "eli lilly teva settlement"
As an individual who doesn't use insulin "yet", I applaud you if indeed your actions have spurred on this reduction in the prices, if only we could have that kind of influence on the entire corrupt corporate medical and insurance companies.
Become a gym bro
@@qjtvaddict ???????????
Go keto and you'll never need it.
@@qjtvaddict People with Type 1 Diabetes: Oh wow, what an idea! Why didn't I think of that?
I heard if it's 2 type, then it's a lifestyle illness. Not giving these CEOs more money was a motivator for me to get of anixety medication completely.
I don't think you know just how impactful that Tweet was and is. It sparked something that will literally save my grandsons life! Thank you!
That's great, and I wish drug companies' primary incentive to sell drugs at reasonable prices was to save lives.
You know Trump signed an executive order that greatly lowered insulin prices and it was cancelled as one of Biden’s first acts as president on his first day in office? Biden reimplemented it himself recently so he could take credit for it.
@@watamatafoyu what's really influencing prices is the monopoly, and maybe there's a monopoly because of the patents...
And don't forget to thank Elon Musk for his highly intelligent idea of turning the twitter verification system into an $8 sticker any idiot can buy. Without his bold and original thinking, it would have been impossible for so many people to impersonate public figures and organizations on twitter.
@@TonboIV 🤣truly a visionary 🤣
Who got played by his own creation.
In Denmark the pharmacy actually asks if you want the cheapest option, the doctor just prescribes the compound, not the company and the pharmacy then usually sells which ever they can get cheapest unless you specifically want a different one.
That generally is how it works in the US. However, insulin exploits an oversight in the patent system that lets them hold a monopoly on production, so cheaper alternatives don't exist
@@CrazySleel oh, ok. I know that the patent was originally sold for a symbolic 1$ to make it cheap and easily accessible for everyone..
@@CrazySleel Well it's less an oversight and more teaching people how to use regular needles is too dangerous apparently so we won't let people just buy it in bottles. Admittedly you can kill yourself with a needle and syringe by pushing an air bubble into a vein.
Same here in the Philippines
@@thelogan4641 Yes, that's true. And that just makes what these leeches do even worse. It's one thing to price gouge on luxuries, but to price gouge life-saving medication? Or anything else essential to survival? Truly evil.
Thank you for using your trolling skills for good. We need to bully more corporations and CEOS into making more changes.
Let's do it.
Remember kids, bullying is morally justified if it's against massive corporations.
We should "bully" the bourgeoisie six feet under!
I wonder where else he used his trolling skills, I wanna see it lol
I like how Mao trolled them, priceless stuff
Imagine if the people demanded more than crumbs
Let them eat cake 🎂
I've been sharpening my pitchfork for years.
What starts with general and ends with strike?
USA, the country with more guns per capita than the rest of the damn world, gets bent by lobbied constantly, so funny
@@Illegiblescream 'general lunar laser strike'
I’ve been a T1D since 1980. I’ve used everything from the beef/pig insulin that was the only option before 1990 to the original synthetic human insulins of the 1990s to the vastly improved insulins that have come along in the 21st Century. My costs went from about $5-$6 per vial in the early ‘80s to insulin that costs $1800 for a single vial. I was without health insurance for part of the ‘90s and had no trouble affording insulin. I was without prescription coverage for two years from 2017-2018 and I had to stop using the $1800-per-vial stuff and go back to Walmart’s 1990-era generic for $25 per vial. My health suffered tremendously because I was no longer able to keep my blood sugar under control. It would go from way too high to way too low and back to way too high in a 12-hour period. I can’t use a pump because my body doesn’t respond to insulin the same way most other people’s bodies do, so I have to do individual injections as needed throughout the day. Even doing 6-8 injections per day, I couldn’t keep my blood glucose levels even remotely steady on the Walmart insulin. Eli Lilly refused to help, denying my repeated requests for their "if you can’t afford your insulin" program. Living in the horrible state of Texas, I couldn’t qualify for Medicaid because I had a job - someone without children in Texas only qualifies for Medicaid if they earn nothing at all.
My current insulin regimen costs (retail) about $6000 per month. I have a good insurance plan now so I only pay $55 for that. I know for a fact that my insurance company is not losing $5945 per month on me, so if the insurance companies can buy the insulin from Lilly at such a vastly reduced price, why the f*ck can’t Lilly sell it to everyone for that price? Lilly would rather see poor people die than make a penny less.
We desperately need single-payer, universal healthcare in this country.
Unfortunately, people who are either horribly misinformed, or brainwashed by the privatized healthcare system push against universal healthcare because apparently it would be "more expensive" than private healthcare, lower quality than private healthcare, and is infringing on their free rights to do whatever they want, i.e. choosing to waste their money on overpriced private healthcare. I have personally heard people express those thoughts and I tried convincing them otherwise but to no avail, the worrying thing is that they themselves would benefit hugely from universal healthcare.
@@AlexanderAF31 yes indeed. If everyone had the same healthcare in this country, nearly everyone would benefit. The super-rich probably wouldn’t benefit, but they’d pay for private concierge doctors anyway so it wouldn’t affect them.
What gets me are the people who scream about how horrible it would be, but when asked if they plan to refuse to enroll in Medicare at age 65, they say of course they will. They paid into it so they’re going to use it. When you point out that Medicare for all would be the same thing, they lose their tiny little brains trying to deny that.
I’ve heard the excuse that having universal health care would mean lower-quality coverage, and I ask why that would be the case. "Because Medicare isn’t taken by every doctor and it doesn’t cover everything." Well, that’s easy to fix. For one, if everyone has the exact same coverage, doctors would have no other options. Secondly, Congress could make it so everything is covered 100%. Most importantly, if everyone has the same coverage, do you really think the wealthier Americans will want terrible coverage? No! Everyone will get the same coverage that the wealthy get and the wealthy will see to it that the coverage is decent.
But you can’t fix stupid. 30-40% of Americans would vote to have their own house demolished if a rich white male Republican told them it would make rich white male Republicans even richer.
In the UK, the NHS pays Eli Lilly £15.68 for a box of 100 vials of insulin, so even $30 is massively over-priced.
It is CA so nothing there works well.
@@brettmcclain9289 found the jealous red state druggie.... stop spending money on fentanyl!!
Are y’all really complaining about the 300+ dollars you had to pay going down to 30? California has to first create a mass manufacturing area and also take into account the insulin creator that first had to synthesize it. Eli lilly is an example of a company ALREADY fully established with massive factories in their favor. Would it kill some of you to be grateful this is even happening in the first place?
@@michaelfoshee8331 $30 is better than $300, sure. But it should be more like $0.20.
@@katrinabryce I won’t try arguing over how .20 cents is less than a literal piece of gum in today’s standards, but then give it some time like always? Fight for it, but don’t hope for something that unrealistic because no big corporation like we have the dissatisfaction of having today that controls the price would stoop that low if I’m being honest
Please don't forget Bernie's contribution, he laid the groundwork for years. In Ireland there is a cap of €140 per family per month and lifelong ilnesses like epilepsy are free for life.
And here we are in the USA saying free health care will destroy the country and turn everyone into lazy vagabonds.
Sandman didn't do crap
That power hungry old man didn't do shit. You might as well credit Trump for some butterfly effect shit.
UK has a ridiculously similar system. If your prescription isn't free, which most is, there's a max price you can pay yearly before any additional prescription costs are ignored. The NHS is a massive consumer of drugs.
@@OnlyGrafting i don't know much of the details for us but in germany there's a formula to the price adjustments.
I just had to look it up, so the minimum price for all prescriptions is 70 cents, and if i understood correctly, every medicine below 37 is sold at profit, and then there's the cap of 72 so no medicine is going to be above 72
As a type 1 diabetic since I was a toddler, fully dependant on insulin as my pancreas is completely dead for reasons we still don't know why, that's fantastic seeing that there's going to be some real changes after a spotlight was shown on the monopolistic greed of these insulin manufacturers.
I wish i had 5 bucks.
I always wanted an exotic pet
Has anyone bought you yet?
@@wetbed6597 back-off, he's mine.
I'm gonna pet him, take him out for walks, feed him, learn him to do tricks, take him out to the dogpark and throw a frisbee at him, trim his nails, brush his hair once a week, give him anti-worm and anti-flea medicine, give him what's over from my food as a treat.
Dont try and steal the dog i've set my eyes on.
I want an exotic pet and what's more exotic then having a human-shaped dog?
@@youtubestudiosucks978 Makima be like:
@@kgb4150 no, makina wants a slave, i want a pet. The difference is that you care about your pet and maoe sure that their healthy
Thank you for your infamous tweet, but more importantly, thank you for calling attention to the need for multi-prong activism. It’s never just a single action or single voice that turns the situation, but many single actions/voices become a force impossible to ignore.
Yup, it is possible that without the public support, these companies would have found a way to lobby/propaganda themselves out of earning less, as they usually do.
Insulin no matter what it is should be $2.00 max they got it for pretty much free the creator wanted insulin to be beyond dirt cheap for the citizen to procure.
Yep, but it's not about reasonable prices, is it?
@Wadderfock it should be, that's the point
@@watamatafoyu in the UK not only is insulin free, it makes ALL your meds free
America is the only "developed" country without proper national health service
@@WolfgangDoW We've developed legalized bribery, corporatism, and exploitation here.
Try $0.20. That's what the NHS pays per vial (£15.68 for a box of 100 vials).
Of course, the insulin type should be of concern also. I have been a type-1 for over 56 years; I take Humulin N (or NPH). The price of this insulin is not being cut.
Then again, I am on Medicare, which pays for my drug as well as my syringes.
Various doctors of mine throughout the years had suggested that I use Lantus, which I was using for a while when the price of a vial was around $140 or so. Then its price shot up to over $300... an increase in a matter of a decade or so! Before I was able to get a health insurance plan, this added expense was too much for me to handle comfortably, so I switched back to Humulin N... a lot cheaper type. I am now so used to NPH that I don't see the point of taking the insulin my doctors have recommended.
This is the problem with our health care system. It's not about doing what's best for patients. These companies could still make insane amounts of money just doing what's best for patients, but they're not required to.
What are the chances your doctors recommend Lantus because they or the clinic they work for receive kickbacks or funding for doing so... Or were told it was the best by a corporate funded study etc.
They have made improvements to insulin, not saying they haven't.
Cartels need to be put in prison! These people are committing crimes against humanity!
Unlikely. The US has on a macro level has every reason to maintain the status quo, as it gives pharmaceutical companies immense wealth to do more research and maintain the US' highly productive research into medicinal development.
@@stephenjenkins7971 Research! Says the stooges and co-conspirators that profit from their neighbors suffering and deaths. Grow a conscience rather than a portfolio.
@@stephenjenkins7971 😂 Research my ass, Cuba does it on a shoe string budget. These corpos just pocket it and pay it to stockholders in Wall Street to gamble with
So regulations and national Healthcare helps keep prices reasonable...
It's still 6 times higher than it was 20 years ago, and still based on maximizing profit.
@@watamatafoyu adjust for inflation
@@austinhernandez2716 Inflation has gone up 64% in 20 years, 18 times less than insulin. What were you trying to say? In 1972 the cost of insulin was $9 per vial. In 1996 the cost of insulin was $33 per vial. In 2017 the cost of insulin was $275 per vial. In 2010 the cost of insulin was $110 per vial. The price is not based on inflation, it's based on greed.
Would be even better if we just fixed the broken copyright and patent systems in this country that prevents competition. Imagine if smaller pharmaceuticals could make their own insulin and sell it closer to the manufacturing cost.
Government price caps are just a bandaid solution that ignores the root cause of this issue.
@@augustday9483 It would just as likely break competition as research into new insulin without reaping the benefits is not worth it.
Still the funniest day on the internet
I'm not on twitter anymore but fuck that was a fun moment
@@tomgoodwin7134It’s a shame that the only people who have verified accounts at this point are either unironic Elon yes men who just think posting random tired memes equals comedy, or people who Elon forced to take the mark of shame. The people who actually know how to tell a joke have largely moved on.
That week where people just trolled like crazy on Twitter and all Elon could say was 🤣 as advertisers abandoned the platform shall go down in internet legend.
A good runner up would be right now when people are getting blue checkmarks forced on them, particularly Dril who changed his name multiple times to get rid of them only to get blued again. Now that they've given up blueing him he's unable to change it anymire and is currently stuck with the name "slave to woke".
Honestly, patents are getting misused more and more in modern times. Stuff like a company making a miniscule change to something which refreshes the patent duration. Especially pharmaceutical companies do that. What we would need is a system where patents run out after a certain amount of MONEY is earned, not after a certain amount of TIME passed. Something along the lines that a company needs to share how much they spend inventing the product, and then let them earn that back with a bonus after which a generic product is also allowed to be produced. Medicals needed for patients to survive should not be misused to get rich quick.
Agreed. I'm a capitalist but corporatism needs to die.
Seems to me that the current system is reliant on a contradiction: The new process is different from the old process for the purpose of patent _renewal,_ but the same as the old process for the purpose of patent _enforcement_ (or else a 3rd party using the old process would not be violating the new patent). I think the real solution is for the government to make up its mind: Is the new thing the same as the old, or not? If so, the patent has run out and should not be renewable; if not, then the old thing should not be a violation of the new patent.
With this condition in place, I think patents should still be time-limited rather than profit-limited, for the following two reasons:
First, because a patented product or process could remain patented for a very long time if the original inventor or corporation makes little effort to market it widely. Take, for example, the sort of vertical wind tunnel facility that is used for indoor skydiving: Its original inventor patented it, built just one, and basically just tried to run it as a single attraction in Las Vegas. When the patent ran out, a few different companies sprang up to build them in various cities all over the world. With a profit-limited patent, the explosive growth of the indoor skydiving industry may have never occurred, or may have taken another hundred years to occur.
Second, because the amount of money that a company needs to make off a certain innovation can vary widely, based on the amount that the company spends _per successful innovation_ rather than the money it spends _for that specific innovation._ The pharmaceutical industry is an extreme example of this: Only 5% of the products that they try to develop actually survive the three stages of clinical trials and become FDA-approved, meaning that the companies have to make that 5% pay for all the money they invest into the other 95% of products that never make it to market. This is very different from a car manufacturer such as Ford, which likely markets much more than 5% of the technology they innovate and so they can make a healthy profit margin without the need to make a successful product pay for itself 20 times over before the patent runs out.
@@philipmcniel4908 You make allot great points. Yeah in Pharmaceuticals most of the products might not make it to the store shelf. The only examples I can find is when they have a product, happen to add something to the patent before it runs out, and presto another 10 years patent.
For Ford they not so much "innovate" but decide what stuff they put into the newest car. Whatever it is if it has success, all others follow.
I am not so sure, if leaving it up to the Government to decide, when a new patent is really new enough to allow for a new patent, or not. Most often then not, someone can get paid in the government, through Lobbyists and then still do whatever it is they want to do.
But that said, the pharmaceutical system around medicine, hospitals and insurances is busted in the US. I heard they all charge exorbitant prices because insurances try to push for discounts so to being able to keep run they all charge more.
And then a person that needs to pay out of pocket without a insurance is kinda busted at paying that exorbitant price.
But I get off topic here.
Get rid of patent renewal, you have say 60 years to profit off of a product, that way inventors are still rewarded for their hard work but those patents don't spin out of control and create oligopolies. Applying this to creative works would also help with rampant copyright abuse.
How about the patent opens after ten years, but the creators receive royalties. After another 10 yrs the royalties end.
It's kind of wild how tides turn. A hand full of years ago, mentioning the price of insulin to anybody, and they didn't even know what insulin was. Now, suddenly, thanks in part to tweets like this, if I say "I need to take insulin to live" people's minds aren't blow anymore. It's such a small subsect of people on the grand scheme of nation-wide medical needs, I couldn't shout loud enough for even my neighbors to care. That changed, and it seemed almost out of the blue for me, given I've been talking about it forever and a half. I didn't feel like anybody even would care, but the sword of public awareness eventually made contact with laws, and the laws swung at profits, and here we are. I don't know how I feel about it, tbh. I'm glad things are changing, obviously, but looking back on all the years of high cost, it's surreal how quickly it manifested, and that's difficult to put one feeling to.
For thpe 1 diabetes - the cost of a one-month supply of the insulin Humalog cost $21 in 1996, but $275 in 2019-a 1200% increase. Actual inflation during that same period was only 63.67%.
The price for insulin in the US is nuts, the same insulin, produced by the same company costs about 20 US dollars here in Brazil and if you use the universal health care system it is free
From the mother of a Type 1 kiddo , thank you and many, many Blessings to you!!
The real reason: they are aware of the general discontent over outrageous drug prices and the growing support for policies such as m4a and medicare price negotiation, so they are trying to staunch the bleeding by lowering some drug prices while raising prices on everything else.
I had no idea who was behind that tweet. I applaud you sir! You have my respect. I wish you billions of subscribers.
#medicareforall #freeinsulin
the only thing more fabulous than his hair is his trolling skills. i would like to believe that tweet was the catalyst, and maybe most effective tweet to be tweeted.
It's almost like they didn't need to nickel and dime people with life saving medications to stay afloat as a company and that they decided to set the prices so high from pure greed
Take the win, my guy. Your lottery ticket of a tweet was more impactful to reduce suffering than some people’s entire careers. Which isn’t necessarily fair but as I said, take the win!
Can’t wait too see what the “we’re on it” looks like
Wow. A little blue bird unleashed and a house of cards starts to tumble.
It's like if Nestle had a exclusivity deal and copyright on bottled water and was selling it for $50. When government was about to do something about it they decided starting selling for $10, with is still expensive, but they try to pass it as good guys.
Yeah, except you can still get drinking water outside of bottles. You can't get insulin anywhere else, so it's even worse...
@@dudu28r81 You can. You pretty much can make insuline at home. But its dangerous if you are not very careful + you need a cleanroom and all lab equipment.
now do it for epi pens
Discovered this channeled because of that tweet, You guys do great work
Same :) I saw the tweet soon after it was posted, and their "admission" video was pretty popular so UA-cam recommended it to me, I saw what they're doing as an organisation, and immediately subscribed 😸
I don't even live in the USA :p
@@AndrewGillard same! That tweet may have only been a facet of the change affected, but it certainly created a ripple effect for a lot of people.
Hopefully they reduce the price of EpiPens next, those things are like $300 for a pack of 3
You are a legend for this. Keep up the revolutionary work .
If they couldn't or wouldn't lower their medication prices, then two things occur: either those that need the medication find alternatives or change their lifestyle to lessen the requirement for the medication, or they die. Either way leads to less demand and loss of sales.
Rather than thinking in terms of human development, we like to think of things in a way that can appease "the market".
Third alternative: People who need the medicine have nothing left to lose and therefore have no problem destroying the system with violence.
The problem is that lifestyle change and/or alternatives only work for some people: Insulin dependence is unavoidable for type-1 diabetics.
That was YOU, great job!
The insulin market is fucking absurd, along with the rest of the American healthcare system. +1 comment for the algorithm to spread the truth
My girl is diabetic, thank you
Some consumer research probably told the insulin manufacturers that even Republican we're fed up with the ridiculous price and would be open to having the federal government regulate the entire pharmaceuticals industry.
They would rather have one drug and lower price than have the entire industry regulated to prevent the price gouging that has occurred since Ronald Reagan quit enforcing the antitrust laws.😅
I can't think of a single elected Republican that fits your narrative.
Doing the lord's work
Wonder how many other meds are pushing out cheaper generic alternatives that don't do any worse but are less profitable like those insulin alternatives.
When you get a drug prescribed you can always ask for the generic if there is one available they will tell you about it.
The incentive should be to do what's best for the patient. Whether that's paid for by insurance or the patient or the government, reasonable prices will still make these companies gobs of money. But that's not enough for them. Treating the patient is just a side effect. Maximizing profit is their primary concern. They're just following the wrong incentive. They're still allowed to be greedy.
You said it best, opacity in pricing. There is no real free market in medicine in this country.
You're an internet hero, bro. Much props to Cali for swinging big to manufacture many other drugs and sell them nationwide.🙌
SEAN, ARE YOU TELLING ME GOVERNMENT ACTION CAN HELP MAKE THINGS BETTER FOR PEOPLE???
Not all heroes wear capes.
And some just use their thumbs.
Comment for the algorithm.
Eat up algy!
I agree! Also, replies to comment are good for Sir Algo Rhythm.
If insulin is cheap as hell all over the world, the easiest way to fix it is to allow imports. That would crash the cost of insulin in the USA
What gets me is the Covid-19 disclaimer on this video.
The reason, out of patent drugs like insulin, is so expensive is that the FDA makes it so costly for competitors to enter the market that they end up causing a oligopoly. The solution is to have a much less stringent class of drugs that are clearly labelled as such. 99% of the time the content will be exactly the same as the 10x more expensive stuff and for drugs where there is a large acceptable dosis span or where you can directly measure the effect, like insulin, there is no point in having the same rules as with drugs where there is a few percentage difference between an effective dose and a harmful dose.
Also as a owner of Novo stock I stand to lose if this is instituted but I would rather have a more sane system over all, more legislation is almost never the answer unless your question is how to employ more bureaucrats.
I would add that patent law should be non-contradictory: Either a new product or process is different enough to be eligible for a separate patent, or it's similar enough that the old product or process infringes upon the new patent, _but not both._
p.s. The "less stringent" category of drugs you're talking about sounds similar to the current reality of foreign-import drugs from other countries such as Mexico that people sometimes take into the US.
I've had the same thought, but the desperate patients who need the drug to live shouldn't have to take the brunt of that risk. When certain drugs don't work exactly as expected it can be very detrimental to quality of life. It puts yet more of a burden on the working poor.
Within the current system, I wonder if subsidies like the agriculture industry has wouldn't be a better way? Keeps cost down for companies so they have an incentive for production, without having to compromise on the product's quality and safety.
@@scobeymeister1 I think it really depends what level of regulation those drugs would still have. For instance, the FDA does regulate the normal foods you buy at the grocery store, which are way less expensive than most prescription drugs, but it's still not nearly as hard to get into that market.
I did an essay of insulin prices for my freshman composition class as my topic this year! (kinda because of the fake Eli Lilly tweet)
While I was writing it this semester, I told my dad about it, and he told me the news about insulin prices getting capped which is fantastic. I may not having diabetes, but I recognize the struggles of having it with a market that only wants to take money off you instead of helping you...
Something that wasn't really talked about that I found odd was some introduction of generic insulin. Generic medications are everywhere, and I think it's about time for generic insulin to finally be supplied and sold for this oligopoly to finally stop happening with companies finding ways to manipulate patients to "buy the better stuff."
I also did a video about this for the same class, but I didn't upload it to youtube since I'm not so proud of it... you've said it better than me
Good to see someone talking about how much healthcare costs rather than who will pay for it.
The next thing I'd love to see more of in healthcare is price transparency; make it so people (at least those who bother to ask) can know what thing will cost in advice and what it would cost of they got the same service elsewhere ("the problem with free market healthcare us we don't have a free market in healthcare").
You know what I find sick?
That workers at Lilly or its subsidiaries didn’t strike…
That would first require organizing enough of the workplace to make that possible and doing it before intense union busting destroyed the union. Yes they should aim for that but don't put the blame on them for not getting to that point yet. Besides, the same could be said of where ever you work. Organize your workplace and begin pushing for change.
@@theaconite1400 THIS! We can't blame the powerless for the crimes of the powerful. They're just trying to survive an obscenely unfair system like the rest of us
As a T1D, bless you for that tweet.
In Mexico, the lowest Insulin is $15.00... How is America number one again?...
We aren't.
Insulin IS free for me as a Swedish citizen. The price of insulin has long been a source of disgust for me; only happy to see it drop.
Im glad we have free insulin here in Brazil
I find terrifying that such an important drug is gatekept by these big companies
You did that! Ah man you are the boss! Thanks man you made my week, much love.
I can't smile hard enough over this tweet 😂
You're a hero!
Really hope that insulin will be free in the future.
There should be a lawsuit to go after the profits they gouged from people thus far. Because this is great and all... But it's not good enough. These horrible business tactics need to be made an example to others that wish to gouge the public.
keep up the great work, will keep sharing this channel
They are doing the exact same thing with the replacements, semaglutides. It can be over $1000/month without insurance in the US, but can be had for under $150/month in Mexico, over the counter even.
As someone outside US, how much humulin R 100ml flakon there? It is around 11 US dollars here. Is it high or low?
Your DnD alignment: chaotic good.
Imagine if we didn't live in a total corporatocracy and basic healthcare was acknowledged as a human right.
Nah I can't that's crazy talk. CEOs and billionaires' lives matter- and so do their profits - which should always grow no matter what
And screw the peasants. No healthcare for you!
The thing is, "healthcare-as-a-human-right" looks different in a country such as ours with a negative conceptualization of rights (i.e. rights being a freedom FROM rather than a freedom TO). And make no mistake--ours is a country of negative rights; if it were not so, the Second Amendment would mean the government has to buy you a gun, and the First Amendment freedom of the press would mean the government has to buy you a printer.
IMO a positive conceptualization of human rights, such as many other Western countries have (along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), leads to a watering down of the sanctity of rights in general: A right to education or healthcare, for instance, exists on a sliding scale based on your particular country's capacity to provide those things (and may need to be flexible in the face of unforeseen circumstances such as a recession, pandemic, or strike). If we restrict our definition of rights to things that don't cost anything to give you, such as freedom of speech, then we are free to maintain the view that the word "rights" refers to things that are completely sacrosanct--or as Thomas Jefferson put it--"unalienable."
@@philipmcniel4908 I appreciate your feedback and I understand where you're coming from. I won't be changing my position, but I hear what you're saying. I don't agree, but I understand your thought process.
@@philipmcniel4908actually "the right to be educated=you have to go to school" is already a thing in the country i live in (the netherlands-europe). Simmilary we have a law that forces people to have health insurance so problems like these with ridiculous insulin prices dont happen. I always find it strange that we can do these kinds of things but america cant. All hail america i guess 🙄😂
@@philipmcniel4908 you really hit the nail on the head with the distinction fron and to. Makes a world of difference
@@jismeraiverhoeven we tried this and people practically rioted.
I'm interested to see how California's plan pans out, it seems like a pretty smart solution on paper.
This way the govt can keep prices lower, without having to worry about supply shortages due to decreased incentive to produce product, since their incentive is the need of the people, rather than profit.
However, this could lead to the govt being the only insulin producer, and people will have to keep them in line so that quality doesn't degrade over time
Medicaid rebate system should NEVER be capped.
punishing companies for gouging should happen
It cost us an extra $1000 out of pocket a month for my Type 1 Diabetic son just to live, and insulin only makes up about $150 dollars of that, "and that's with good insurance". They're gouging us on the other stuff like Meters, Testing Strips, Pumps, Syringes, Lancets, Sites, CGMs, emergency glucagon pens, and a lot of other misc. stuff. Don't get me wrong, it's great to see the cost of insulin comming down, but there's a lot more to being a Diabetic than insluin (esp. a Type1 Diabetic).
Bernie Sanders has also been a huge influence for this, by genuinely challenging the CEOs head-on, as Sanders is now the leading chairman of the H(ealth)ELP Committee of Congress.
They (ALL Medical product and services companies at every single level from pharma to local clinic) love to blame insurance. Having insurance is a terrible burden, yes, but, the prices are constantly raised by ALL of those 'Medical' companies and providers. They drop your insurance bcause of greed. The insurance company doesn't want prices to increase, ever. The doctor does. The hospital does. The pharmacist does. It's THEM.
You must be paid by the insurance.
People pay higher premiums for in the United States and almost any other country.
The reason that we pay so much for insurance is because a very crooke😢d senator from Nevada got a law passed--the mccarran-ferguson act.
The mccarran-ferguson act said that the federal government could not regulate insurance, only states could. This act was passed after the first successful lawsuit against a group of insurance companies for price fixing was confirmed by the supreme Court.
Most doctors are primary care doctors. When a primary care doctor retires in the United States, he or she has made less per hour working than an elementary school. Doctors work 60 to 80 hours a week. In medical school and residency they work even more.
Doctor salaries have been falling since Ronald Reagan started doing things to help the insurance industry pay Hospitals and the people who work in them, especially doctors, less.
In countries with universal health care, most of Europe, Taiwan, Japan, the insurance industry is strictly regulated by law.
In those countries, the overhead to run the healthcare system is less than 5% except for Switzerland which lets the healthcare insurance companies take 8%. Under Obamacare and Medicare advantage, both for-profit systems, the health insurance industry in the United States is taking 30 to 35% of the money just to run the financial part of healthcare.
Medicare and the VA which or both nonprofit systems like most of the rest of the world, only 5% is bent running the billing and payment part
Becoming a doctor lowers one's life expectancy by 5 years
The real culprits are the insurance industry, the medical device manufacturing industry, and Hospital corporations.
That is why I say you are an insurance company shill and nobody should use listen to you. If almost every other democracy in the world can run their health insurance industry for less than 5%, there is no reason the American healthcare and industry needs to take 30 to 35% of every healthcare dollar spent. It is obscene. It is killing Americans.
@@Madronaxyz I can see why you would think that, but the comparison is not just flawed and uneducated but disingenuous as well. For Profit healthcare in the US is a minority. What this means is that most places accept the rates that Medicare sets and that's the baseline amount that is paid out.
Usual and Customary Rates then comes into play. UCR is decided by how much healthcare providers are getting paid in a geographical area for lets say, a tylenol. At first, they charge the baseline, which is ZERO because Medicare won't pay for it. Now comes in the hospital saying, we want to charge for tylenol and if you don't let us, we won't accept your insurance.
Well the insurance company can try to stonewall them but then another company comes in and says, we'll let you charge 10 cents. Then , next year, they say, we now want 30 cents, then 50 cents, now $30,00.
Why? because other insurance companies are desperate for contracts and will let them.
The doctors at clinics now look at the UCR and say, hey, we can charge $30 for a tylenol and poor us, Madronaxyz says we get paid less than teachers and die so young and darn we SHOULD charge because our lives are so hard and poor and it's really a sacrifice to charge $25 so we'll charge $25.50 at our clinic. We're saints.
This is every single billable procedure, everywhere in the US.
All of the commentary in this thread show how overly-complicated and harmful our health care system is (yes, including insurance companies). It's supposed to be about best serving the patient, and guess what, everybody can still make good money doing that in a system that isn't about maximizing profit. What we have now is price-gouging, and anyone can lose their job at any time (for almost any reason) along with affordable insurance (effectively health care for most people). Insurance companies are death panels that decide based on maximizing profit (not even bottom-line survival anymore) and have an acceptable percentage of human loss to make rich people richer. This is our sick system right now. The incentives are wrong. It should be about best serving the patient, and everyone else involved can still make good money doing that with reasonable prices and ensured (not necessarily insured) health care.
The idea that insulin costs money at all is just wild to me. In the UK not only is insulin free, but if you need it then ALL your meds are free
When I heard that insulin prices were dropping the first thing I thought "was oh boy what single ingredient are they changing now?" Because of course, latest and greatest. 🙄 this is by no means going to be beneficial for anyone.
I use an insulin that costs around $300 for 10 mL in the US without insurance and at full price. I live in Denmark, and without insurance and for full price, it costs $30. It’s also one of the most expensive insulins on the market (called Fiasp). The cheaper and more common type costs $25 for 10 mL (called NovoLog/NovoRapid), but costs $72 in the US.
The Medicine’s Board in Denmark recently also said that they won’t pay for Fiasp anymore, except in very specific circumstances, because the price was too high, and most people won’t have an effect that justified the price, that cheaper insulins couldn’t do instead. Guess what happened? Price dropped immediately. They still don’t give any subsidies to it, but people are more willing to pay full price for it now, when it’s cheaper. I get it with insurance, because I fulfill the conditions that they would give insurance for.
Uhh, I agree that it was not your tweet that caused the price drop. Though certainly public pressure as a whole is a factor. The biggest factor is that Lilly is not in a monopoly position with Lantus-type insulin, and that individuals are now having to pay the list cost instead of insurance companies.
Using meme magic for good
My backstock of insulin is dwindling and it’s scary. But it’s not just the insulin itself. I have union insurance and my blood glucose monitor supplies are still $217 a month. And if one of my pump pods falls off a day early, or the needle tube gets clogged with my skin, or it just generally malfunctions, I have to spend two weeks emailing back and forth with Insulet and PROVE to them that I need a new one, then mail it back to them and wait for them to inspect it and decide whether the malfunction was my fault or not, then they MIGHT send me a new one. All the while, I can’t get a replacement one because the insurance will only allow them to be filled on the day that the last replacement runs out.
It’s fun.
As someone who is insulin dependent. That tweet was awesome!
I can't find the tweet. Can someone link it?
Great report. Thank you
Based bigly-
The blue bird being a force for good, it's nice to see. Thanks for being out there tweeting the good fight
Let's go just an eency way further and get public healthcare done tho. It's been over 100 years since first proposed. I really think this is something we should have had done a long time ago
I mean I'm not even against companies making money but THIS is ridiculous. Wealthiest nation on earth which doesn't give a farck about the lower 90ish%.
We can do better
Could this just be because of competition from the government coming in, therefore big pharma lowering their prices?
Only the government of California is planning to manufacture insulin and that is not on the market yet. So I don't see how the government of California selling cheap insulin would have an effect on current and recent prices of insulin
The u.s might be the only country where people wanting a medication they need to live to be free is seen as a bad thing
“GO GET ’EM, More Perfect Union!”
-Me, a Type I diabetic
Hi, please refrain from hardcoding subtitles in youtube videos and instead rely on their supporting infrastructure instead, thanks!
Insulin is free in the UK because diabetics don't pay for their prescriptions.
When I needed more insulin before the insurance thought I needed more insulin by (and thus refused to cover it) I was told it would be 500 dollars out of pocket
I was diagnosed as what’s now called a type 1 diabetic in 1970. When rDNA-sourced human insulin became available it was reasonably priced. When insulin analogs became available, faster and slower acting, they were US$50 to US$60. A bit much but not insane.
I’m a great believer in capitalism but the rises in the cost of insulin analogs are simply evil and not excusable. I’m glad that they’ve been at least somewhat rolled back.
Look at the cost of the cheapest regular insulin at Walmart here in the USA. No insulin analog needs to be over twice that. Ever.
During WW2 the U.S was able to produce one B-17 bomber per hour. Is it really beyond your nation to build a few insulin factories to supply to citizens at cost?
There is so many ways we can change laws to improve so much.
As a type 1 diabetic i have to give my 2 cents here even though they arent in anyway informative, i've always wanted to move to America one day, not permamently but for a longer period (i am Finnish and i am very happy to be living here) but i always knew it would be quite the uphill battle to live there with diabetes to say the least, but thanks to this i might even someday have a fair shot, there is hope now atleast. Although i guess theres always Canada if something else comes along eh
You're a hero homie, I'd be willing to say that dumb Tweet did a lot more than you think. Thanks man.
Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, a year's supply of insulin costs between 67 and 160 EUR, and 100% of that is paid by health insurance.
Is this a way to snuff out smaller insulin startups, then increase back to normal prices?
Tl,dr: a new competitor entered the market, the price was capped by law and they were pivoting toward newer, more expensive drugs anyway.
You sir are an absolute hero for those tweets.
You are a life saver, a true hero.
Fascinating video but _please_ remove the baked-in captions! I had to cover half the screen with my thumb while watching to not get constantly distracted by them and it really makes watching the video harder. There's a reason there's a toggle on the UA-cam player!
I have watched a couple of your videos in the past. but this was great! liked and subscribed!
Also about time CA and Biden did something good, good job Dems you finally do some good for the public.
Wow you were behind those tweets? Brilliant 😂