The original development of insulin was nearly 100 years ago, so the patent has expired, and in any case was donated to the public good: https://www.treehugger.com/health/inventors-insulin-sold-the...

Seriously what a ridiculous slippery slope argument, have you never been to another near identical democracy with a higher HDI than the USA?

People don’t pay for insulin in any of them and yet, society functions just fine.

You're aware that (AFAIK) every single other OECD state uses implicit (monopsony) or explicit price controls as a key part of controlling healthcare costs and maintaining access to healthcare, right? In fact it's maybe the one factor that pretty much every non-US healthcare system shares. Even friggin' Singapore, the usual "look, the market can work!" example for healthcare, does it.

Insulin is a generic. No one is required to be compensated.

Pharma had their chance to be reasonable. That time has passed.

Not to say that we shouldn’t appropriate intellectual property when necessary (eminent domain or not respecting a patent, as has happened in India and Canada), it’s just not necessary in this case. That doesn’t make us Venezuela, that makes us pragmatic.

Generic Insulin is already cheap, around $100. It is the newer more effective versions that pharma companies have come up with recently that are more expensive.

One can't argue that the pharma companies are bringing no value, and then demand their specific product because the generic isn't good enough.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/insulin-walmart-vial/

One can argue they’re attempting to capture more value than the social contract intended, and that contract will be updated through legislative action.

We reserve the right as a society to update the social contract at any time.

I never signed a social contract. Can you point me to the text? I'd like to read it, since apparently it keeps requiring me to relinquish my rights.

Google for your local, state, and federal law. Your continued presence in the jurisdiction indicates your acceptance of the implicit contract defined by these laws.

If it doesn’t vibe with your beliefs (which is fair!), there are other jurisdictions available for consideration, a visa and plane ticket away.

The laws are not the contract. I already moved where I did because I liked the laws. But the damned things keep changing because of this social contract. If the laws were the social contract, your parent comment wouldn't make sense either. Not liking the laws is one thing. Justifying new ones because of this pretend contract is another.

I’m not sure what to say if you’re not happy that democracy isn’t static. The only thing in the world that is constant is change.

You call it “pretend”, but the results you take issue with appear to be very real.

That's one of my complaints about democracy. Something doesn't have to be real for people to vote like it's real. There's no contract that says anybody owes anyone anything else at a specific price.

The inventor gave the patent away for $1 because it would have been unethical to profit from it. That’s still true.

There are different generations of insulin; the old ones are cheap, the latest ones are not. I would like to see every inventor give the patents away for free, it would be great in a way, I just don't know who will invent anything new because these days the marginal cost of improving products is astronomical. For example, building a log cabin 200 years ago was tiny, both in cost of raw materials and work. Now the cost of a house is huge, not only because different materials are used, more complex manufacturing processes are needed, but who wants to live in a log cabin? Same comparison with insulin, there is cheap insulin and expensive insulin, people want the expensive one to be cheap. Not always possible.