Quote:
Originally Posted by finnbow
Yes and I'm not generally in favor of such. However, the price gouging should be obvious to anyone with a brain (this may exclude you).
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True enough. But that tells the what, not the why.
Early in the 20th century, when insulin treatments were sourced from animal pancreases, insulin was expensive to produce. It worked will in most patients, but treatment results were inconsistent and some patients didn't tolerate this form of insulin well.
Most insulin on the market today is so called human insulin, meaning that the human gene is responsible for making insulin when inserted by the manufacturer into bacteria or yeast, which then produce human insulin proteins. This production method works just as well as the original method of isolating insulin from animal pancreases, and is far more cost-efficient.
However, ramping up production for manufacturing insulin in this manner is expensive. There are 3 pharma companies producing most of the insulin in the US, it's pretty cost prohibitive for other companies to enter this space. Also, there are reports that some patients have problems with human insulin.
Is animal sourced insulin still available in the US? No, though it remains available in other countries around the world, albeit in decreasing quantities. The FDA worked with manufacturers to get them to voluntarily remove animal sourced insulin from the US market. The result is that there are 3 pharma companies with 90% of the market, and no market incentive to reduce pricing. Further, that monopoly has been essentially protected by the FDA's policy which reduced, then eliminated the availability of insulin from other sources.
There is a third type of insulin: "biosimilar" or synthetic insulin. The human body reacts to synthetic insulin in the same way, and it's cheaper to produce. Market availability is currently quite limited, since the FDA approved synthetic insulin only last year.
Those in favor of price controls for insulin are focused on the right problem but not the right solution. The solution would be: reopen the market in the US to the availability of insulin from as many sources as possible.