Twitter Blue tweet may have cost Eli Lilly $LLY billions due to price of insulin

[QED]

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=WDV5XBK6BNlERriVJV4xDg

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=WDV5XBK6BNlERriVJV4xDg

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=WDV5XBK6BNlERriVJV4xDg

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=WDV5XBK6BNlERriVJV4xDg

[blm]

1. This just may blow up

in the best way.

[QED]

2. I sure hope so!

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. What, like insulin would be free the way it should be?

[yardwork]

12. I am loving this.

Peak capitalism eating its own tail. Pop more corn.

[QED]

14. It is rather delicious, isn't it?

Elmo unleashed chaos and it's so much fun to watch.

[malaise]

24. THIS

😀

[dalton99a]

3. Good.

Goddamn greedy motherfuckers

[zuul]

6. Holy shit! Elmo is a fucking moron!

[Disaffected]

7. WTHell should insulin be "free"?

I don't know what a fair price would be, and I expect it would be less than what is being charged, but by no means is any manufacturer going to produce a pharmaceutical grade drug and sell it for nothing.

[QED]

8. Fair price yes, price gouging no.

[Disaffected]

11. Sure.

I'm wondering why no-one else has gotten into the business - perhaps because the established pharmas would simply undercut them?

Also wondering if there is at least some justification for higher than what would think would be a reasonable price. Higher drug standards being imposed? New, better injection devices? New and better manufacturing methods (produced now by gene modified organisms rather than from animals)?

I dunno - I'm just glad I wouldn't have to pay such prices for a drug my life depended on.

[IbogaProject]

21. Barriers to entry

Insulin first discovered in the late 1920s. Only advances over 50 years was different suspensions which slowed the absorption. The next advance was using biotech with recombining DNA altered eco-li cells those human insulins went on the market in 1982. The technology hasn't matured much. The most recent changes were Humalog, Novalog both made with one pair of amino acids switched. Those are made exactly the same as the prior ones. The other advance was hanging stuff off the molecule to get the absorption to right around 24 hours and stable absorption. There are two main types Glaglarine and Detmir.
The small cartel of basically three companies have the regulatory bodies have much harder approval than the previous generic drug regulations. So now the two biggest of the cartel each make a bio-similar (identical) of another's product to offer very slight discounts on things that should be under free market competition with only safety regulations constraining them.
The problems we face in getting a single national health payment system are the campaign cash big pharma throws around, and their huge advertising budgets corrupting journalism.
Single payer would save everyone aggravation, reduce delays to care, save money even during the initial transition. There would then be knock on benefits like reducing liability insurance, since health costs wouldn't have to be covered anymore and again no barriers to diagnosis and treatment.

[Disaffected]

25. Thanks for that.

Comparing Banting's insulin to the recombinant DNA versions is apples & oranges alright and there are other factors as you point out. I wonder if, for example, insulin sold in Canada is the same as the Glaglarine and Detmir? I wouldn't be surprised if it is not.

Single payer solves a myriad of healthcare issues....

[Mariana]

28. The price of Glargine was jacked way, way up, before the patent expired

just so they could rake in a ton of profit before the generics came available. It nearly tripled in price over about five years time. It may have gone up even more than that, but I stopped buying it so I don't know. The same thing happened with Levemir - in fact, the price of the two products rose practically in lockstep.

The products in Canada are the same.

[Disaffected]

30. "The products in Canada are the same."

They are? You mean for the same brand names?

[Mariana]

31. Brand name or generic.

Insulin glargine is insulin glargine.

Edited to add: Another poster in this thread had the same experience I did with the insane price increases.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217353787#post27

[Disaffected]

32. No, I was referring to the price.

[IbogaProject]

36. It's identical world wide

[yardwork]

13. Sell it at cost. Would cost pennies a dose. Seems fair.

Last edited Sat Nov 12, 2022, 07:56 AM - Edit history (1)

[Disaffected]

18. There is no way a pharma

is going to sell anything at cost, at least on a routine basis, and no reason to expect them to do so, anymore than Walmart or Ford.

What the "fair" price is is hard to determine unless the cost of production, marketing, distribution, gov't approvals, subsidies, retailer markup etc. are known.

Anyone here have any idea what Lilly's profit margin on the stuff is?

[QED]

19. I think 43-60x price markup is a bit much.

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=kYmmfmAEhpec7irAk8Ud3g

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=kYmmfmAEhpec7irAk8Ud3g

[Disaffected]

23. No argument there.

Don't get me wrong - I am not attempting to defend the US pricing, just trying to get a handle on what a reasonable price would be and why the US pharmas are charging so much and getting away with it.

Another curiosity here is, why if the price in Canada, and maybe other countries, is so low, why do Canadian or other foreign companies not sell into the US market? Do they not have FDA approvals? Some other reason?

[yardwork]

35. Sure they do. Insulin is generic now. Pharma sell plenty of things at cost.

Generic antibiotics cost about $5 a prescription, for instance. Once the R&D costs on a drug are recovered, the only reason to charge high prices is greed.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

16. Fair price is price in Canada. Gouging price is normal price in America. Talk about inflation!

[William Seger]

27. It should be free to anyone who needs it

... at public expense, and a fair price to anyone who can afford it. My dog had diabetes and required 2 shots a day, and over the 4 years she got them, the price more than doubled for no damn reason other than drug company greed.

[Mariana]

29. It was because the patents were going to expire.

The companies wanted to rake in as much profit as they could before the generics came on the market. Did you notice that ALL of the similar insulin products rose in price by about the same percentage, at the same time?

[LiberalFighter]

9. Will Eli Lilly sue Musk?

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

26. Oh, I hope so.

It would serve him right. He's a pompous, pretentious little prick. His immediate behaviour in the take-over of twitter revealed him to be irrational, foolish, reckless and cold-hearted (who cut the work force in half right before the holiday season at a time when Americans are already reeling from inflation). He claimed that he bought twitter to aid humanity. What sanctimonious BS. If he wanted to aid humanity, that $44 billion could have had far reaching impact in so many other areas, I could spent a day listing them all. This is purely a vanity for him and nothing so lofty as aiding anyone but himself.

[asiliveandbreathe]

10. EXPOSEDGOOD!!!!

Hey Eli Lily..too bad, so sad..YOU LOST $$$$..well, just like those who need life saving meds lose money. thanks to your greed..and greedy investors..roll back the cost..

[RedSpartan]

15. My daughter has Type 1 Diabetes

I'm lucky to have great health insurance, but still, this pleases me greatly. F these price-gouging bastards.

[TexLaProgressive]

17. The prices of modern insulins is too high, that's a given

The type insulin developed 100 years ago sold for $1 is not the insulins in use today. They are the products of genetic engineering and precisely modified for different speeds and duration of action.

The discussion needs to be on the price gouging by Lily, Novo Nordisk and Sanifi. It's a waste of time to focus on beef and porcine sourced insulin of years ago.

[bucolic_frolic]

20. Mush Twit has created a fake news machine!

[McKim]

22. Insulin should be free...

I think insulin should be free!!!!! The price gouging by Eli Lilly is disgusting!!!!!!

[Kennah]

33. Does Eli Lilly make bonesaws?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

34. Burn the greedy bastards' stock to the ground. Well done, Eloon.