Why I like Eli Lilly

… nobody gouges like Lilly.

Price of insulin in OECD countries
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr…

intercst

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… nobody gouges like Lilly.

Price of insulin in OECD countries

Interestingly, the people that invented insulin “gave it to the world”.

https://bantinghousenhs.ca/2018/12/14/insulin-patent-sold-fo…

Something went wrong later.

Tim

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Interestingly, the people that invented insulin “gave it to the world”.

Something went wrong later.

Yes! You have to make it, store it, distribute it, sell it, and all those other pesky things no one ever gave the world for free.

The Captain
gave up on investing in drugs because of the social pressure for excessive regulation and political maneuvering that make the business unpredictable.

PS: The practical way to cut your healthcare costs is to live healthy!

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Yes! You have to make it, store it, distribute it, sell it, and all those other pesky things no one ever gave the world for free.

The Captain

Yet every other country on the list managed to deliver it to market cheaper than the super efficient US drug companies? I smell a rat in your story?

One place they could cut cost and improve profit dramatically would be to reduce their massive spending on advertising prescription drugs to the general public on TV? The only possible purpose is to put pressure on doctors to prescribe their product over what may be good for the patient?

Only one other country in the world allows advertising of prescription drugs … (New Zealand) and they strictly control price.

Tim <gets 80% of prescriptions paid for by my retired “Federal Public Servant Health Insurance”>

OT … maybe not, I was horrified when COVID-19 closed our border to Americans who took the bus to Canada to buy desperately needed and affordable insulin.

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https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6833…

cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 per month for Americans with private health insurance and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The bill has yet to pass the Senate

Further:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/08/cal…

California will begin making its own low-cost insulin…
Gov. Newsom has a $100mil budget to build a state run facility to manufacture insulin.

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Thank you for recommending this post to our Best of feature.

cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 per month for Americans with private health insurance and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The bill has yet to pass the Senate

California will begin making its own low-cost insulin…
Gov. Newsom has a $100mil budget to build a state run facility to manufacture insulin.

Certainly creative, hope it works out.

Nova Scotia made insulin free to low income diabetics several years ago. It actually saved the provincial healthcare system a lot of money as there were far fewer expensive ambulance calls.

Good to see people getting creative with taxpayers money… as long as it is not too creative!

Of course single payer*** allows the GICs to take advantage of such opportunities.

*** - It’s not really single payer as the Feds and Provinces share the costs.

Tim

Yes! You have to make it, store it, distribute it, sell it, and all those other pesky things no one ever gave the world for free.

Indeed. But the costs the costs for doing those things haven’t tripled in the 10 years, yet the prices have.

gave up on investing in drugs because of the social pressure for excessive regulation and political maneuvering that make the business unpredictable.

But the industry is predictably profitable:

Using a measure called Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), the analysis found that large drug companies were the most profitable industry, with a combined ROIC of 17.3%. The average ROIC across industries (excluding large drug companies) was 11.5%.

https://www.thepharmaletter.com/article/drug-majors-most-pro…

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Yet every other country on the list managed to deliver it to the market cheaper than the super efficient US drug companies

Well the list in the OP was of the cost of insulin broken down country by country…which I inferred to be the price that the same few multinational drug companies allowed each country to negotiate. Without regard to how it’s distributed within each country. This being the case, it looks very like the US consumer is shouldering the expense of other countries’ favorable price negotiations. A case of one person’s Good Deal is someone else’s rip-off.

VeeEnn analyzes,

This being the case, it looks very like the US consumer is shouldering the expense of other countries’ favorable price negotiations. A case of one person’s Good Deal is someone else’s rip-off.

Hardly. The US price reflects widespread political corruption as drug companies buy a sufficient number of Congressmen and Senators to prevent price competition in the US.

There’s really no way you can defend this, and I’m a 30-year investor in PFE and LLY.

intercst

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The rest of the world in particular the western world is not getting a free ride off our expenses in pharma. Hardly.

The universal way it is approached outside of the US is for governments to negotiate with pharma. All the costs are added up in total and a 10% margin is allowed. That is a very rich margin. The US pharma companies are extremely happy with such profits.

The US government by law is not allowed to negotiate Section D pricing with the pharma corporations. You are paying through the nose to be screwed by the US government and pharma in tandem. They love your arguments. They are laughing at them though.

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The US government by law is not allowed to negotiate Section D pricing with the pharma corporations.

Thank you George Bush.

The Bush administration will oppose any attempts by congressional Democrats to pass legislation that would authorize the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies under the Medicare prescription drug benefit, according to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, the New York Times reports.
https://khn.org/morning-breakout/dr00041007/

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