Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own.

[riversedge]

Says it will take years . Some good history provided.

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=dZQmzY2zjVO9bwdPZ_GtbQ



Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make its own.

The drug’s cost crisis is spurring states to pursue a public version of an essential medication

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23574178/diabetes-insulin-pen-injection-cost-california


b]



By Dylan Scott@dylanlscott Feb 1, 2023, 6:00am EST






...............If California succeeds, it’s possible that, eventually, a state like Washington or Maine would devote its efforts to a different essential and expensive medication. Other options could include drugs experiencing a shortage, drugs with expired patents but no generic competition, or high-priced medications with inequitable access such as EpiPens or asthma drugs, Brown said. States could then over time specialize in manufacturing specific medicines and trade with one another for other critical drugs.

This may sound far-fetched, but the public production of medicine is not entirely novel. Michigan used to produce its own vaccines through a state-run enterprise until the 1990s. Massachusetts still does, through the UMass college system, with the state providing funding to those institutions to produce vaccines, which are distributed to state residents at no cost.

Long-term trends toward privatization and the declining public trust in government’s ability to accomplish major projects, along with the mighty lobbying power of the drug industry, worked to discourage public officials from ideas as ambitious as the public production of a generic insulin. But the crisis of its costs has reached the point where states are compelled to intervene.

California’s experiment will be the most important test of that concept, and it will be years before we know whether it worked. But if it does, it could prove a pivotal moment in the effort to make essential medicines more affordable for Americans.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Seems to me that that this benefit to society is a...

fundamental purpose of a government that claims to work for its citizens

[jimfields33]

3. It's 35 bucks a month now thanks to president Biden!

Still pricy but much better.

[Celerity]

4. That 35 usd month cap only applies to seniors on Medicare, and it is per type of insulin, so

if you take 2 types, it is 70 usd per month.

Insulin costs will be capped in 2023, but most people with diabetes won't benefit

The Inflation Reduction Act's insulin cap will apply only to people on Medicare, leaving behind more than 21 million people in the U.S. who may need the lifesaving drug.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna58165

Annemarie Gibson's son Owen was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2011. Six years later, in 2017, her other son Thomas got the same diagnosis. The San Diego mother, 49, has health insurance. Each month, she says, she pays $400 in premiums for her family. But that doesn't cover the cost of insulin for her sons, both now in their teens. That medication is another $200 out of pocket.

Gibson is among the millions of people in the U.S. who won’t see relief when the Inflation Reduction Act goes into effect on Jan. 1, capping the monthly out-of-pocket cost of insulin at $35 for seniors on Medicare. In August, Republicans blocked a provision in the bill that would have capped the out-of-pocket cost of the drug for everyone on private insurance.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Gibson said of the cost of the drug needed to keep her children alive. “We don’t have other options. We don’t have another choice.”

More than half of the diabetics in the U.S. — over 21 million people — are under age 65, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 16 million people ages 65 and up have diabetes, though not all of them are on Medicare.

snip

[lees1975]

9. It is just for medicare, the $35 price cap. However,

the profiteering on the sale of this drug is incredible. I bought a month's worth of flexpens at a pharmacy in Mexico last year without a prescription, because I was there and I could, and what gets charged to insurance at almost $400 cost me a little over $19. Same brand, same producer, a Mexican-based pharmaceutical company.

This is why government operated single payer health care needs to be in our future.

[calimary]

2. Hey, why not?

Isn’t competition supposed to be our all-American thing?

[Stargazer99]

5. States should get together and do this with any capitalist enitity that is so money hungry

that people are not held captive to greed and death. When is the average American going to get fed up with being robbed by business? Capitalist laughing all the way to the bank while they are figuring out how to get more profit- not protecting human life. And to you who are enriched by the capitalist system and defend it for your profits is your good is more important than human life?

[harun]

6. Yes, they should.

[kacekwl]

7. Seems like a good idea for a big

problem for soooo many. Just think if all states got together to make it happen. Possibly the threat of big pharm losing their grift of the American population would make them fall in line.

[Chainfire]

8. And I can hear the choir warming up to sing "Socialism."

[republianmushroom]

10. like it

[PlanetBev]

11. If that Trump judge in Texas blocks the Mifepristone abortion pill

I’d love to see California produce it’s own.

I just donated $50 to The Brigid Alliance, an organization that helps women travel out of oppressive states to access abortion elsewhere. I live to thwart Fascist bastards.