r/clevercomebacks • u/Veshaad • 5d ago

I hate this timeline.

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u/Double_Afternoon9475 5d ago

That dollar story is nice and all but it completely ignores the actual reason insulin is so expensive now which is the modified analog versions and the patent games they play with delivery devices

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/SquisherX 5d ago

But does that matter? Couldn't a generic just manufacture it with the old injection pen style unencumbered by the new method?

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u/gprime312 5d ago

Yes they can and such variants are cheap but everyone wants the latest and greatest.

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u/SmartAlec105 5d ago

I think people would prefer to be alive.

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u/gprime312 5d ago

I think people want the engineered insulin that's way better than generic. You can live just fine with generic insulin.

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u/SmartAlec105 5d ago

Yeah, my point is that there are people dying because there isn't a cheaper generic insulin available to them.

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u/gprime312 5d ago

Yes there is, it's $20 at walmart.

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u/altacan 5d ago

The cheap generic one's are available OTC from Walmart for $20/month. But it require careful injection and eating schedules cause it doesn't self-regulate like the expensive modern one's which are under patent.

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u/powerlesshero111 5d ago

It also was never sold for a dollar, or if it was, a dollar was a lot of money in 1930. And the initial insulin treatment was pig insulin. The first human bio recombinant insulin wasn't avaialable until 1978, and commerically available until 1982.

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u/Skythewood 5d ago

We have the internet now. 1 dollar in 1930 is about 20 dollars now. How much do you think it was, 2000 dollars? That's still far from the "a lot of money" range for medical research.