Soaring insulin prices show how the US is losing the battle against high drug costs

[Nevilledog]

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Darrel Rowland
@darreldrowland
How a little-noticed bipartisan US Senate investigation exposed the seamy underside of why Americans' insulin prices are so high - and how this is basically the same MO for many high-priced prescription drugs
@jaketapper

Soaring insulin prices show how the US is losing the battle against high drug costs
A probe using 100,000 internal documents gives an unprecedented look at how insulin prices shot up, & why the US is losing the war on high drug prices
dispatch.com
1:25 PM · Jan 29, 2021

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/healthcare/2021/01/29/insulin-prices-high-drug-costs-us-taxpayers-consumers/4252808001/

The cost of insulin has been kept artificially high for millions of Americans because drug manufacturers and middlemen work together to maximize their profits, a new bipartisan investigation shows.

This maneuvering around the growing price tag for medicine needed by diabetics to combat America's No. 7 killer represents a microcosm of the reasons prescription drugs cost so much in the U.S.

It also demonstrates one of the consequences of growing consolidation within American health care, a trend The Dispatch is investigating.

“Insulin is Exhibit A of why America’s drug pricing system is broken from top to bottom," said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden in a statement to The Dispatch/USA TODAY Network. "Our bipartisan report reveals how large corporations benefit from high prices while consumers and taxpayers foot the bill.”

The Oregon Democrat and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley oversaw a two-year probe by investigators for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, who used 100,000 internal documents and emails that for the first time lay out a detailed pattern of abuse by PhRMA and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Grassley was chairman of the panel; Wyden is expected to be named his successor soon.

*snip*

[3Hotdogs]

1. I thank God every morning, we don't got no socialized medicine in the U.S.

Yes, Art, its sarcasm.

[soryang]

2. the "ethical" drug manufacturers

...have given rise to a black market in insulin with their exorbitant price increases.

[WyattKansas]

3. I have had T1 Diabetes since the 8th grade and have an extreme hatred of...

The Medical, Pharmaceutical, and Insurance Industries for stabbing me in the back and twisting the knife for most of my life, because they have all played a part in the Vulture Capitalism to use me as their golden goose to keep giving them obscene profits. And I resent the hell out of those building their financial portfolios off it, while looking down their fucking noses at my non-existent retirement portfolio as those people snicker at what I don't have, because of the collateral damage done by that lucrative disease for them that also had to be paid for by me.

And then there are the sleazy chicken shit Republicans who put Diabetes on the stock market for the Vulture Capitalists to swarm all over it like piranhas in bloody water, in the first place. I only view all of it as being 'taxed and penalized' my entire adult life by all of the above and nothing will ever change my mind, because nobody in the United States will ever remedy the financial damages done to me my entire life. Why? Because stupid ignorant Americans think capitalism destroying me is completely fair and right.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

4. This👆

[tinymontgomery]

5. What, everything I've been reading since Biden

What, everything I’ve been reading since Biden took office is
he made the price of insulin go up his first day by canceling
trumps new regulation that was going to start on the 22nd. This has to be fake news. (sarcasm)