• Grass@sh.itjust.works
    15·
    1 month ago

    wasn’t insulin the one where the inventors didn’t patent it hoping it would become cheaply available to everyone? I have family memebers getting it with medical benefits coverage but is it really that expensive?

    • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
      14·
      1 month ago

      Can’t remember if they didn’t patent it, or sold the patent for pennies.

      Yep, went and found an article: https://www.vox.com/2019/4/3/18293950/why-is-insulin-so-expensive

      Seems from browsing the titles of pages during the search that one way companies are reaping profits is by repeatedly changing the delivery devices for insulin, so that the payment keeps coming in even if the insulin is being targeted for cost reduction by politicians. That makes sense to me, because I remember how the various devices I used changed over the years. Some of them, like the ‘insulin pens’ made so little sense (they had some benefit over normal vial+syringe, but not much) but were suddenly pushed heavily.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
        8·
        1 month ago

        So is there no way to get insulin in like a vial? Like the type my pets vaccine comes in? I’m not being a smart ass or anything just seems odd that no independent chemists haven’t sold it that way with only a mild markup from the base costs and completely undermine the large companies on costs.

        • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          7·
          1 month ago

          The last few years, there was a shortage of regular saline IV bags because most of the producers have gone out of business (it’s expensive to assure sterility and follow all the FDA certification/inspection and the end product isn’t ordinarily very valuable). The FDA declared the shortage over earlier this month, ending a 7-year official shortage.

          It’s hard to profitably manufacture medical grade products, so a lot of the off-patent, competitive products end up in shortage from time to time, which drives up the price (and more frustratingly, makes the prices very volatile).

        • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
          3·
          1 month ago

          No, the vials were usually available, but the doctors get pushed to push the new delivery devices (like the insulin pens, which have still stuck around). Insulin (with insurance) is generally cheap enough that most can afford it, but without insurance the amount they try to charge you is insane (though programs like the goodrx or whatever that pharmacies use if you don’t have insurance bring that down to a sort of affordable amount… sometimes). I don’t know the exact details of the business of insulin, but producing the stuff is finicky enough and startup costs are heavy. They use modified E. coli (or maybe S. cerevisiae? It’s been a while since I’ve looked at the biotechnology… often bacteria are easier to genetically modify but the eukaryotic yeast is more likely to have an internal environment that matches so protein production is better… off the top of my head that may be the difference between novo nordisk and eli lilly, the two big producers of insulin right now) in giant systems that produce the insulin. That’s a lot of investment and testing to get up and running to standards (or maybe it used to be… now maybe you could just slip the fda a bribe in a envelope at the same time as you give orange man one).

          Now the money is being made by the insulin pump companies, who have high costs for the supplies you continuously need for them. The insulin itself still come from the old vial and is drawn out by syringe… which can be proprietary, jesus christ they do stupid things to a simple syringe to force you to pay them for the way to draw out the insulin, just look at the stupid thing that you have to deal with for medtronic, one of the bigger diabetes companies.

      • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
        3·
        1 month ago

        It should be mandatory to allow selling the cheapest variant then… But obviously the government has nothing to gain from that n