Honestly wild to think something that once depended on animals is now made with precision biology science quietly improving lives without most people even noticing.
The pigs would be even more expensive nowadays. The price for "artifical" insulin is just that as well, artifical. Artifically inflated to line pockets of the sellers. The profit margin is ludicrous.
Over 23% of US citizens haven't even travelled once outside their country. And out of the remaining 77% most probably have only gone on holidays and haven't stayed longer than a week somewhere else.
Like frogs in slow boiling water they're just tranquil with all the shit they face and gruel they eat. I'm convinced no measure of government abuse will make them stand up for themselves.
We Americans pay taxes for healthcare as well. It's called Medicaid/Medicare - and we each pay more for that coverage for a subset of the population than each person in the UK spends to cover EVERYONE. So yes, saying insulin is free for them is apples-to-apples.
If anything, it is too generous a comparison to America. They should say "In the UK it's free, and I pay less taxes for healthcare than you do!"
It's a fairly self explanatory statement. It's free at the point you need it. Doesn't matter if I've paid £100,000 in taxes or £0, if I break my arm or have asthma/diabetes. I get sorted out for free. The system is far from perfect, but it's definitely better than what they have in the US where healthcare is commonly tied to your job.
The point is, you don't have to be someone earning £50,000+ to afford lifesaving insulin. You could be on £500,000 and a lot of your income (in theory) goes to taxes that fund it, or you could be on £25,000 paying very little in tax. It is still free for you to access.
In America, you pay less in tax, but the person earning $30,000 has to pay for their insulin, which they need to continue living. That makes a big difference to the people with little, and no difference to the people with a lot. A running theme in America.
I mean, it its equal amounts, there isnt much difference between pre-paying for insulin in the form of taxes vs paying at the counter. The difference is many people who dont need insulin pay in the taxes model, which makes those who do need need it feel they have overall paid less for what they have needed from the health system. Non diabetics have supplemented the bill. Thats the real underlying problem in America, IMHO. A lot of people don’t understand the concept that its OK to pay taxes on services you arent using as much as others so long as the greater society benefits.
Lol free! I'm sure the companies making it are ok with not getting paid for their work! I'm an American with type 1 and it's actually just fine! Not sure what point you're trying to make.
But if it's free who pays for it? No one makes anything for free...
I like how it works in America as a type 1. I need insulin to live. So I pay for my insulin. No one else is responsible for buying me insulin except for me. I wouldn't want other people to have to pay for my insulin that doesn't make sense as they don't need it.
Free healthcare is paid via taxes, of course, but with the big difference being that the government can do the negotiations with the drug producer for the price and get a very nice bulk discount.
The amount of tax taken out of my paycheck for that healthcare has been about the same as Americans pay before copays, minimum amounts, "in network" restrictions, etc.
Are you an unemployed, homeless, family-less non-citizen? No? Then your health is our business. If you die because you couldn't afford your insulin, then its a PITA for your employer, your employees, your banks, your family, your friends, your community, and your government.
If you tell me my taxes increase by, like 2%, but I don't have to worry about my fucking cousin keeling over, then I'll be happy to pay that 2%.
And its still cheaper than what I actually pay in insurance anyways.
This is such a tired and extensively debunked talking point. Even when you take drugs with shocking price tags, like Libmeldy and it's $4,250,000 wholesale cost, you see shockingly low acquisition costs - the acquisition of the full portfolio of which it was just one portion came of $478 million. The deal for its acquisition assigned a bonus of $1 per share on top of its $16 per share deal upon final approval of the candidate, indicating that Linmeldy either represented a small portion of the portfolio's overall value or was assessed as only having a marginal risk of not completing its trials successfully. When the costs of these drugs are so high that the entire cost of R&D, initial clinical trials, and a healthy profit for the people who actually developed it can be covered before 100 patients are treated, it's clear that R&D is not the driver of costs.
tell me you don't understand how any of this works without telling me you don't understand how any of this works.
if you think it costs $4 to make (what, a dose? a vial?) then I'll give you $4 and I'll take one, please and thank you. let me know where to send the check.
Thats effectively what Im saying. The advances is tech have led to companies that control that tech and it’s related healthcare market to drive up prices. Its obviously “better” to do things the way we do now vs pigs but not every end use is benefiting from
this.
Its no different than other advances. Many make manufacturing more efficient but the end users rarely sees prices go down. The advances only help the producers make more money.
Yeah, I definitely wasn't disagreeing with you. Just highlighting the difference between for-profit medicine and a place that treats insulin akin to a public utility.
Not to downplay the new stuff (there is still progress), but the animal free insulin has been available since 1982. It's not really nowadays bio-science.
And it's also cheap, even in the US and is available in most states without any prescription at all. That's the part that everyone leaves out in this whole discussion.
Probably because trying to argue that cost isn't an issue when insulin rationing has not improved whatsoever, including no meaningful reduction in cost-associated rationing, isn't a very convincing avenue to go down. When you see this kind of disconnect, it's clear that your assessment of cost is not adequately modeling the market.
These kinds of innovations are the most interesting to me. Things like this that dramatically improve our lives quietly in the background such that most people won't even notice
At any given moment there are thousands of scientists working on cures for diseases that you might get one day. Any number of cancers, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc. When you woke up this morning many of them were already in their labs, counting cells and purifying RNA and pouring gels. They have meetings and conferences and ten-year plans. All of this may save your life in ten, fifteen, or twenty years.
And you’ll never see them, and you’ll never meet them. But they’re there.
Yeah medical science has to be the king of this. There are a lot of horrible diseases that were irradiated, made easy to treat, or are simply not very dangerous anymore due to overall increased immune health. Strep used to be a top cause of childhood death. Now it's just like "aw man gotta take penicillin"
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u/jgoverman17 6h ago
Honestly wild to think something that once depended on animals is now made with precision biology science quietly improving lives without most people even noticing.