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by ceejayoz
2334 days ago
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"Is the $100 indexed to inflation?" > In 2009, the list price for a 10-milliliter vial of Humalog, a fast-acting insulin made by Eli Lilly, was about $93. Today it costs closer to $275. Similarly, Novo Nordisk's fast-acting insulin Novolog cost almost $93 for a 10-milliliter vial in 2009. Today, it costs about $290. - https://www.businessinsider.com/insulin-price-increased-last... If you've got any evidence that the inflation rate between 2009 and 2019 was 300%, I'd love to see it. |
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As you can imagine, we don't just extract humalog from human pancreases. They instead modify plants to generate the exact molecule humans would. This is somewhat common these days, but it does take some effort and innovation to cultivate, versus the naturally occurring substances previously used.
I don't know if human insulin is any more effective (wikipedia citations suggest no but...), but the impression I got from the podcast was not really, and that the drug was considered a net loss for its developers.
What I did learn today is that in 2006, we restricted the supply of products competing with Humalog (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_(medication)#Principle...):
> Since January 2006, all insulins distributed in the U.S. and some other countries are synthetic "human" insulins or their analogues.
If we truly cared about affordability, why ban additional supply? Even if not everyone can use it, forcing people who need the human insulin to compete with those who could choose seems likely to drive up prices.
tl;dr: Humalog was an alternative to an already existing treatment, and by 2009 it already was enjoying 3 years of import protections from the treatment it intended to replace.