More Americans with diabetes will get a break on their insulin costs in 2024.
Sanofi is joining the nation’s two other major insulin manufacturers in offering either price caps or savings programs that lower the cost of the drugs to $35 for many patients. The three drugmakers are also drastically lowering the list prices for their products.
The moves were announced in the spring, but some didn’t take effect until January 1.
Drugmakers have come under fire for years for steeply raising the price of insulin, which is relatively inexpensive to produce. The inflation-adjusted cost of the medication has increased 24% between 2017 and 2022, and spending on insulin has tripled in the past decade to $22.3 billion in 2022, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Some 8.4 million Americans rely on insulin to survive, and as many as 1 in 4 patients have been unable to afford their medicine, leading them to ration doses – sometimes with fatal ramifications, according to the association.
It does require time, effort and resources to manufacture, and on top of that there’s a regulatory system for quality checking so that nobody gets poisoned by a faulty batch, which is more time, effort and resources.
Some cost is reasonable. Price gouging is unreasonable and greedy. Free is also unreasonable and would create a risk of low production quality.
When people say free, they don’t mean completely free. They mean free at point of use for the patient, with the system funded by tax dollars like every other first world nation.
An example in the US would be the military. If you are in the military, either active or reserves, and need a prescription then it’s 100% free to you if you pick it up at a military pharmacy. That doesn’t mean that the manufacturer of the prescription is eating the cost, it means the federal government is using tax dollars to pay that on the back end and the military patient doesn’t pay out of pocket for it.
We could do that on a national scale for cheaper than what we collectively pay now for healthcare.
As long as there are multipler suppliers, as a single large purchaser the Government would have (and the Military already has) way more leverage to negotiate far better prices from suppliers than individuals ever could, since no one supplier wants to lose such a massive customer to their competition.
Even in a purelly rightwing 100% financial logic, it makes sense to have centralized procurement of medicines such as insuline because it’s the most efficient use of resources.
Or at least it would make sense if the rightwing (which means both Democracts and Republicans since the Overtoon Window in the US is well to the Right of most of the developed world, so it’s really just hard neoliberals vs quasi-fascists) weren’t complete total hypocrites whose main objective is not at all managing the country as best as possible.
I completely agree with you, it is absolutely technically possible. We could direct all of our resources with more care.
It will never happen in the real world. It would require at least half the population to be willing to sacrifice their own self-interest in the short term in order to benefit society as a whole in the long term. One is immediate and tangible, the other is abstract and ephemeral.
I don’t think I should have to pay for others’ insulin. It’s great that our civilization has found a way to help diabetics live longer than they naturally would. In return for that, those diabetics can trade some of their money for it.
I pay $175 every three months to see a psychiatrist. I also pay for my medication.
I am extremely thankful that I have this option. I would far rather work a few more hours a month to be a functional person. That is a good deal. I don’t need anyone else to pay for it and I am extremely grateful to be born into a society that provides this stuff that I can trade my own work for.
Do you think you should pay taxes for firefighters? If so, what’s the difference in your opinion?
Firefighters provide a service that I use
So you don’t use medical services? You just said you do, but you pay for them yourself.
Why should you pay for firefighters putting out other people’s fires?
Because firefighters provide a service that I use. I have used firefighters’ services. I don’t take insulin.
🙄
The time, effort, and resources could be handled by a public industry that produces a public good. There’s no reason for it to be privatized.
It can absolutely be privatised as long as some government body handles negotiations.
Letting the private sector compete for public contracts can often reduce prices and make production more efficient. It needs to be handled well of course.
It works pretty well here. The government negotiate the prices for medication to reasonable levels and every individual has a medication price cap that gradually reduces the price for medication until they are completely free (fully subsidised). After 12 months the price cap resets and the prices go up to normal. The price cap is set at ≈230 EUR.
Apparently insulin is always free and so are some other stuff.
Obviously this only applies to prescriptions.
IMO a great system is a mix of both a strong private sector and a strong public sector with non corrupt governmental oversight.
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I mean, we could just wish for a unicorn pony that shits glitter and barfs rainbows while we’re at it.
Oh so you mean literally what I said in my original comment?
IMO a great system would be to round up the executives, board members, district heads, and shareholders into work camps. 😘
Did you miss the part where I disagreed with you, lol?
You said that it has to be handled by exclusively the public sector and I said that it doesn’t. And I said that here we have accomplished a great system without that.
Can you not imagine the system being better than it is right now?
It works great. Could you explain how it could be better? Seems like a terrible idea to just change things with no evidence that it would improve things.
The entire healthcare system could use a rework but there is nothing wrong with this system in particular.
Profit serves no function and could be removed from the system entirely. You’re just scared of change because you are a conservative.
Lol, no I am not a conservative. I just want to see evidence.
A system without profit is way too fragile because of corruption.
A fully communist system won’t ever work because humans are human and they suck ass.
Yes we are familiar with your barely-concealed desire to kill people. What we’re trying to discuss is more of a help-poor-people thing, than it is a hurt-rich-people thing.
What? No! They should never be allowed to die. 🤭
They have accumulated an incredible debt to society that they must pay back, no matter how long it takes! 😉
could be, in a fantasyland where all people do things out of pure altruism and always put the good of others ahead of their own self-interest.
I used to believe people could be this way too. Then I turned 8.
If public libraries were proposed today you would oppose them as fantasyland nonsense.
In the real world, public works work.