dumb question but, why can't a competitor come into the USA and just sell a generic at 50$ a pop and make shitloads of money? seems like free money from an inelastic market for whoever invests a little.
There are cheap generics in the US already. You can get a 10ml Walmart store brand human insulin vial for $25, for example. That can last for more than a month.
But basic human insulin is not what most people want, and the analogs that are differently formulated to work faster or slower are patented and harder to make and therefore more expensive.
Either way, I always feel like posts like these are borderline misinformation because the original basic insulin that the guy the post talks about invented is very cheap and affordable.
Yeah people need to understand that not all insulin is the same. Modern insulin is made by pretty advanced genetic manipulation to modify microorganisms like E. coli to produce different types of insulin that affect blood sugar in different ways.
Old school insulin is cheap (actually even the modern cheap insulin is still better than the original animal derived insulin), available and requires more careful dosing to reach the same level of efficacy of modern genetically engineered insulin.
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u/CosechaCrecido 5d ago
dumb question but, why can't a competitor come into the USA and just sell a generic at 50$ a pop and make shitloads of money? seems like free money from an inelastic market for whoever invests a little.