Their cost for insulin averages $4,000 a year. The cost to manufacture a vial of insulin is less than $10.
Under a House bill passed yesterday 232 to 193, all Democrats and only 12 Republican members — minus all GOP House leadership — voted to lower the cost of insulin to $420 a year. That’s a 90% reduction in cost.
Congress needs to start anti-trust hearings to investigate price gouging of drugs, food and gas now.
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I understand the desire to make something like this cost less, but how does that actually work? How can Congress just by fiat say that a certain item can only cost a certain amount? Are they funding the difference out of the budget?
Too many of us conflate high prices and even high profits with “gouging”.
I wish that our media — especially our print media — would provide actual information on Insulin costs and prices.
There is so much broken in our current health-care system that all kinds of absurd factors play into such things.
I don’t doubt that gouging plays a role. At the same time, comparing an unsourced number for “annual price” (“$4,000/year) and another unsourced number for manufacturing cost is not, in itself, very informative about the matter.
I don’t know if gouging is involved and I did not make that accusation. What I’m trying to figure out is how Congress just waves its wand and make insulin cost less to the consumer.
Understood. I was referring to the last sentence of the thread-starter.
I join you in doubting that Congress has much to say about the street price of Insulin or any other drug.
I’d also like to see some data about the first assertion of the thread-starter. Is $4,000/year the price that insured Americans pay out-of-pocket, or is it — for example — the price that drug companies start with before applying “negotiated discounts” for their policy-holders.
In the EOB’s that I get for Medicare/BCBS, I routinely see major health care providers like MGH billing ten times as much for a specific procedure as they are actually paid.
I’m sure that somebody somewhere claims the resulting 90% as “savings” that inure from the “negotiated” rate.
Our health care system is so fundamentally dysfunctional that I’m not sure that any particular aspect of its economics withstands scrutiny.
Is that like airlines allowing more time than they know they need from departure point to arrival point so they can then claim a 90% on-time arrival rate? đŸ™‚
Without a patent, the price of any drug, including insulin, would fall. Congress does indeed have way to eliminate or remove these patents.
Like it or not, copyrights and patents are provided for by the constitution (article 1, section 8, clause 8):
If we’re going to amend the constitution, removing or significantly restricting patent protections is far down the list of needed changes.
No need to amend.
One cannot simply request a patent as one would request a personalized license plate or request that June 5th be National Frozen Yogurt Day. There are conditions to be met and congress can set those conditions as well as limit the length of time that any patent is in force.
Congress has already set those conditions for patents in place today. It doesn’t take long on Google to discover that many or most of the patents on Insulin have expired or are about to expire.
Limiting patent protections on new forms of insulin isn’t going to make any meaningful difference in the price of insulin for at least a decade.
Since the government is not allowed to seize property without paying fair compensation to the property owner, Congress would have to pay existing patent owners in order to nullify patents that are already issued.
It’s one thing to offer generic rhetoric. It’s something else again to describe specific remedies that are even possible, never mind practical.
The fundamental issue is our for-profit private health care system and private health care insurance industry.
The price of insulin, along with a host of other drugs, is better addressed by fixing those fundamental issues than by further complicating the already enormously complex and tedious intellectual property system.
Yuo. But let’s look forward at new patents, eh? Do we need more Bill Gates int the world<
New patents would apply to potential drugs that are at least 10 years in the future (it takes at least that long to get a new drug through clinical trials and FDA approval).
Changing patent regulations won’t have any effect on insulin prices for a very long time.
We could use the Defence Production Act.
I think the connection of insulin prices to national security is stretch for even the most creative congress.
Oh? How many Americans on Medicare are being charged these prices? What are the costs to Medicare to tend to the resulting physical ailments caused by those who are unable to take the proper dose? It’s only a “stretch” if one is focused on protecting the shareholders who are large campaign donors. Even Trump learned that one in his first month in office.
Please explain how any of this relates to national security.
Are you suggesting that Medicare recipients with Diabetes are a vital part of the US military?
Use of the DPA does not require a large-scale crisis but must support the national defense, including the protection of critical infrastructure.
Medicare is part of our critical infrastructure.
Senate Democrats announced late Tuesday the framework for a $3.5 trillion infrastructure package that will expand Medicare to offer dental, hearing and vision benefits.
Members of the House and Senate can call their proposals whatever they want.
The claim that high insulin prices threaten national security is specious at best — especially when an ugly hot war continues to be waged in Ukraine.
Exactly. And the same is true in the courts….so this is all possible.
Question: Who is a larger threat to the 8.3 million Americans who require insulin to regulate blood glucose levels, Big Pharma or Putin?

That argument can be used to promote anything.
We’re talking about the criteria for applying the Defense Production Act.
I agree that drug pricing, along with the rest of the health care system, is badly broken. I think the focus on the DPA is misplaced.