“This was an unexpected victory in a long fight against an illegal cartel of three corporations who have raised their insulin prices in lockstep.”
The Biden Administration pleasantly stunned health care reform advocates Tuesday by including short-acting insulin in its list of 10 drugs for which Medicare will negotiate lower prices, power vested in the White House by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The IRA was passed in the face of one of the heftiest barrages of lobbying in congressional history, with the pharmaceutical industry spending more than $700 million over 2021 and 2022 — several times more than the second- and third-ranking industries — much of it aimed at stopping the legislation, watering it down, or undermining its implementation.
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:
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-insulin-by-country
Where’s the antitrust suit when you need it, and how long before the the three mentioned companies start merging?
In before the “quality product” argument gets brought up, like the US is the gold standard in medicine and no other country can produce it at an equivalent level. Every other country can produce it but it’s 5-10x the price in the US, it’s straight greed