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They need to find a way to negotiate the price down for everyone, not just retirees. Kids need insulin.
And after that, epi pens.
Here’s some good news about that with California making its own insulins:
The state-label insulins will cost no more than $30 per 10 milliliter vial, and no more than $55 for a box of five pre-filled pen cartridges — for both insured and uninsured patients. The medicines will be available nationwide, the governor's office said.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/19/1164572757/california-contract-cheap-insulin-calrx
That is really great news. Thanks!
I wish the process would be repeated by the federal government, for every similar drug that could be produced with their patent's expiration.
Where are all of the "think of the children" folk? Not important now that they're born.
"If you're pre-born, you're fine. If you're preschool, you're fucked." -- George Carlin
Except even that isn't true, because those "choose life" assholes don't give two fucks about poor women without insurance being unable to afford pre-natal care. If your fetus dies from something preventable, fuck you lady.
The pharmaceutical industry spent $700 million lobbying against this? What a bunch of assholes.
And they’ve already filed lawsuits:
The suits make similar and overlapping claims that Medicare negotiations are unconstitutional.
The companies argue that the talks would force drugmakers to sell their medicines at huge discounts, below market rates. They assert this violates the Fifth Amendment, which requires the government to pay reasonable compensation for private property taken for public use.
The suits also argue that the process violates drugmakers’ free speech rights under the First Amendment, essentially forcing companies to agree that Medicare is negotiating a fair price.
They also contend that the talks violate the Eighth Amendment by levying an excessive fine if drugmakers refuse to engage in the process.
Just ridiculous.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/10-drugs-to-face-medicare-price-negotiations-see-the-list.html
A great way to tell that a business is making way too much money is when they can afford to hire monkey cages full of lawyers to fling every terrible legal argument they can think of at you in the hope that one of them somehow sticks.
It is more cynical than that. They want to out spend the resources available to fight them, not win a legal case.
And yet in every other country where they have to bargain against a centralized healthcare system, they are able to provide a decent price.
The US needs to take decisive action against these sociopaths.
The companies argue that the talks would force drugmakers to sell their medicines at huge discounts, below market rates. They assert this violates the Fifth Amendment, which requires the government to pay reasonable compensation for private property taken for public use.
It will be interesting to watch this shake out, because this decision could have a lot of knock-off effects when it comes to further price negotiations by the government across a wide array of sectors.
"Below market rate"
If only looking at the USA where pharmaceutical companies are free to do as they please, but probably still higher than in any other rich countries in the world.
Market rates aren't reasonable compensation.
When your reaction to poor, sick human beings getting the medicine they need without losing everything else in their lives is disappointment, you're a bad person.
Fuck market capitalism and the sociopaths it creates.
Edit: and of course they're actively suing from their steel towers for the right to continue to gouge sick, poor people deeper into poverty. What a humane economic system, amirite?
Won't somebody think about the pharma shareholders!
Meanwhile, those same companies sell for a fraction of the price all around the world.
You’re not kidding. Somebody did a survey in 2018 of insulin prices around the world, and here are the top ten most expensive:
The study revealed that the manufacturer price for any given type of insulin averaged five to ten times higher in the U.S. ($98.70 USD) than in all other OECD countries ($8.81 on average).
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-insulin-by-country
Holy shit, the drop from the US to Chile is insane.
I don't know how this is a negotiation...big pharma overcharges the USA by a lot...we all know it. How is this not illegal? Why are they not held accountable for inflating prices for 1 group of people? Imagine if they did the to just a single race...black, white, Asian, whatever... Is t it the same thing?
Insurance companies when you need to use their service (which you pay monthly for):
They throw a few million in the right pockets and they make billions in return, best investment they ever made.
Why is lobbying legal!!!
Just get rid of lobbying! Christ!
As someone from the UK, I don’t know what to make of the Biden administration.
I see positive news articles about what they’re doing, then I see people (not just right wing) saying it’s going poorly…
Obviously things can always be better and there are going to be areas where they’re failing, but how actually is it going over all?
Biden is fine. A lot of people are looking for someone who is going to revolutionize things overnight. A lot of folks also like to give the President blame or credit for things out of his control. Overall I've been pleasantly surprised. All I really wanted was not Trump, but Biden has been a lot better than that.
If we pretend Trump wasn't a thing, I'd say Biden is really living up to his campaign promise of "nothing will fundamentally change." By that I mean, he hasn't personally done anything amazing or terrible, and he hasn't gotten in the way of others, either.
For instance, this has the fingerprints of Bernie Sanders all over it, who chairs several committees in congress, including the relevant one for this. Has Biden stopped Bernie Sanders? No, and while I wish that fact wasn't a win, it is.
Bernie isn't alone in being the only good thing about our current government, either, but Biden also hasn't removed some of the terrible things the trump administration set up. The Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back a bunch of things I'm very upset about. It is my personal belief that he's heavily influenced by certain groups (insurance) but is trying in other areas.
Biden isn't at all supporting policies that are just common sense if you live anywhere else, and while the UK isn't the best, I've discussed this with a British friend and I still include them in that. In short, you have more protections from your government that they need to try to remove first.
In my opinion if Biden had been elected after Obama or after a normal Republican he would've basically had a quiet presidency and been one of the ones you don't really mention in history because nothing happened. Standard calls for corruption, but not worse than any regular senators. In today's world, that's positive, with Republican candidates promising to abolish the department of education, but in another world where things aren't full of neonazis and fascists, I'd be saying it's awful, because I would have wanted a president that would change things for the better, and now I'm just beaten down enough to be ok with "Nothing will fundamentally change."
I feel like he isn't a deranged narcissist who would nuke his own country if it somehow benefited him.
The bar is on the floor for the Republicans.
You know who the real enemy in all of this is.....
Anyone is making a fraction of a cent off of squeezing the literal life out of American citizens by keeping their money invested in "big pharma". I am more than sure there are walking hypocrites out there that have had a loved one die while making money off their death.
If you care about this issue, tell everyone you know to de-invest in these companies.
Fuck them and their sociopathic ways.
I am going to throw this out there. I worked on waste processing systems for pharm companies for about 4 years, no it wasn't every day, it was like one out of three projects.
Those pieces of garbage waste money harder and faster than any other industry or government I have ever dealt with. And that includes the US military, the gangster government of Saudi Arabia, and just plainly badly run factories. This is just one story
I designed some software for a system that reduced one chemical that was hard to dispose of into two easy to dispose of ones. No big deal. Sent it out and wrapped up in few days. Come in one morning to see this email exchange, heavily paraphrased
"Please inform (my name) that he is to fly into site for a Monday meeting to discuss the problems"
"He designed the software this is a chemistry problem"
"We want everyone on the project there"
"Again he is the software guy this is a chemistry problem"
"We want everyone on the project there"
"Why can't he just sit in a conference call? He has other projects"
"We want everyone on the project there"
They flew me out, put me in a hotel, got me a rental car, paid for 4 meals, all so I could sit in for that 30 minute meeting and contribute nothing. There was well over 20 people in that room. I chatted with a few. This is welder, this is the concrete guy, this was an electrician, this was the tech that ran an Ethernet cord, this was the boiler guy. All of us sitting there while the chemical engineer just repeat back what he said in the email that they have to clean the tanks again.
Btw my employer charged 2 grand a day for me on site and 2 grand for travelling on top of expenses. I had sushi for dinner that night and stayed in a 3 star hotel, eating your grandma's insulin money. You try to imagine what kinda money we are talking about. Over 20 highly skilled techs and engineers having to travel there. Go hire an electrician for a day and see what you get charged.
I want to tell this story to every bootlicker pharm shill in this country. This kinda shit is where the money is going. Not into R&D it is going so one manager could say they did their due diligence.
It must be getting close to a US election year. Suddenly, a Democratic president feigns to give a shit about the people who voted for him. Albeit grudgingly, of course, and knowing whatever he suggests now will be so watered down by the time it’s executed it will be like nothing happened at all.
You're right, but also it's better than nothing. If it were a republican in office they'd be doing the opposite and taking things away for the same reason, so I'll take it.
The fact that sentence exists is pathetic for modern society.
Overdue
The body count is as high as the tightrope on insulin price gouginf