Not really informed on this subject: Does “he sold the patent for 1$” mean anyone is free to make it, or does it mean some company got the rights despite his intention to make it cheap?
If it’s the first why isn’t there a non profit making it to lower the cost?
That’s certainly a response you could take to developing a better insulin when people could still buy the old type for much cheaper but something tells me it’s an overreaction.
They haven’t changed this shit in 20 years. They’re just raking in cash like they’re Disney or something.
Source: my daughter is 20 years old and has been using the same 3 rapid acting insulins the whole time. None of them have changed. ALL of them have gotten more expensive.
imo that doesn’t justify pricing people out of a drug that they will literally die without. It’s absolutely vile that the price of something essential for people to stay alive isn’t price controlled and is subject to the whims of the manufacturer.
The one time congress actually did a case study on drug pricing they found that in all the internal discussions a drug company had while setting the price R&D costs were not mentioned even 1 single time.
Unless they sell the new insulin at cost, then no, they don’t get to charge more for the existing product.
They always say that they charge more to pay for the risk from R&D, but having people pay more an existing product to finance future R&D is the complete opposite of that.
This is why some stuff should never be handled by private corporations.
Do you know how little of their own money pharma companies spend on R&D? The majority of their budget is for advertising and marketing. Most of their R&D budget is from government grants i.e. taxpayer money. Meaning more often than not you are paying twice for life-saving drugs.
My health insurance changed in April, I’m now buying my insulin out of pocket and my experience is to use the GoodRx app to find it cheaper, I found it for $27.43 per vial at a pharmacy closer to me than my former big name pharmacy. Bernie should get the GoodRx app, it will help him save money
Here is an interesting explanation offered by Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1997):
racket; racketeer. English pickpockets, once the best of the breed, invented the ploy of creating disturbances in the street to distract their victims while they emptied their pockets. This practice was so common that a law was passed in 1697 forbidding the throwing of firecrackers and other devices causing a racket on the city streets. From the common pickpocket ploy the old onomatopoeic English word racket, imitative like crack or bang and meaning a disturbance or loud noise, took on its additional meaning of a scheme, a dodge, illicit criminal activity. Before 1810, when it first appeared in print, the word had acquired this slang meaning in England, though it was later forgotten and the word racket for a criminal activity wasn’t used again there until it was reintroduced from America along with the American Prohibition invention from it, racketeer. The only other, improbable, explanation given for the word is that it was originally the name of an ancient, crooked dice game. …
Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Fifth Edition (1961) corroborates Hendrickson’s etymological analysis:
racket. A dodge, trick; plan; ‘line’, occupation, esp. if these are criminal or ‘shady’: … Ex. racket, noise, disturbance. …
John Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words (1859) has this entry:
RACKET, a dodge, manœuver, exhibition ; a disturbance.
Francis Grose & Pierce Egan, Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1823) has this:
RACKET. Some particular kinds of fraud and robbery are so termed, when called by their flash [that is, cant] titles, and others, Rig ; as, the Letter-racket ; the Order-racket ; the Kid-rig ; the Cat & Kitten rig, &c. but all these terms depend on the fancy of the speaker. In fact, any game may be termed a rig, racket, suit, slum, &c. by prefixing thereto the particular branch of depredation or fraud in question, many examples of which occur in this work.
So the noun racket in its underworld sense has been around since the early 1800s (at least) and appears to have been inspired by the use of sudden noises by pickpockets or their confederates as a distraction just prior to a theft.
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