Many companies manufacture insulin. There's also not just one kind. Two pervasive types are fast acting and slow acting, the latter typically used to provide a low level continuous boost throughout a day. Manufacturing high quality product in volume isn't particularly easy because it's a biologic drug requiring genetically modified organisms to create the protein, typically E Coli, and purification to human injectable standard is costly, requiring removal of the pieces of cells that were used to make it, including endotoxins in the case of E Coli.

Beyond that, there's an easy way to guide analysis of what appear to be excessive costs in any market: find out where government force has screwed it up. It will always be the cause.

Insulin is not a single drug. Discounters such as Walmart already offer low prices for generic insulin. The expensive branded forms have different release profiles which are more effective at controlling blood sugar in some patients.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/walmart-unveils-low-price-an...

While we should do more to improve insulin affordability, the pricing is a bit of a distraction from the core issue. While type-1 diabetics will always need some exogenous insulin, the majority of diabetics are type-2. And research has shown that the majority of those patients can put the disease into remission with lifestyle changes. That is where governments should be focusing.

https://www.virtahealth.com/research

Good luck telling Americans they should exercise more and eat less/healthier as a solution.

Welcome to crony capitalism. It's America's specialty.

Plenty of countries do it. It's a misnomer to call it capitalism. It's fascism: nominal private ownership with defacto government control in different potential ways (e.g. force backed barriers to competition, regulation boosting costs, etc.)

I think that's why Crony Capitalism has a very specific meaning different from Capitalism. Modifiers make a difference. For example, National Socialism and Socialism are very dissimilar.

National Socialism is a type of socialism and the National Socialist party platform is overtly socialist in every way if you want to look it up in historical documents. The ludicrous idea that they were "right" was a crude smear from the communists who were merely trying to undercut a competing gang. A smear even more ludicrously carried forward to the present day by the staggeringly ignorant.

National Socialism is socialist in the same sense that the DPRK or the GDR are/were democratic.

Passing this bill gives the drug companies the same amount of money as today. It only capped copays. Doing that still just passes on increased insurance costs to individuals. Drug companies would still make a ton.They need to wait for their in house insulin so they are not just giving a ton of money to the drug companies through the VA/Medicaid.

This was proposed by republicans to help save their pharma buddies from losing a ton of business in california to the state contracted insulin. If the cap went into effect there is no reason for people to switch to the state funded insulin.

Sure. I wasn't really responding to this bill directly.

I’m seeing the price per vial of generic insulin lispro (Humalog) for roughly $20 a vial. I’m not sure how many vials a person needs but that’s not completely nuts.

Yeah they’ve invented newer more expensive types of insulin that better control blood sugar, and they are continuing to invent newer types that are even better. Which I think is great and allowing there to be a financial incentive to create new and better insulins.