I’m not planning it, I’m providing a counter argument to the commie argument that if a drug price is high it means the government needs to control it, as Bernie would like to do. Get it?
So do you prefer the free market or socialist solution when it seems a particular drug price is too high?
I certainly agree with the free-market solution.
Working in the pharmaceutical industry and understanding how time-consuming and complex insulin manufacturing is, I was only trying to underscore that even with high manufacturing volumes, it's still expensive to make. It would be very difficult for a generic manufacturer to come in and make it cheaper.
That said, I do think there's an issue with diabetes' supply chain in general when it comes to pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. They claim to offer "leverage" by purchasing large volumes from wholesalers, and then they receive rebates--they never get passed onto customers. Something about the model just strikes me as wrong, and PBMs likely exist because of government regulations and licensing. I think insulin pricing could be made much cheaper by squeezing PBMs out of the picture.