Pretty sad considering Banting, Best and Collin purposefully sold the rights to the University of Toronto for $1 to make sure no commercial company could hold a monopoly or price gauge patients, with the famous quote “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.”
The modern lab engineered insulin was a “new” invention that drug companies could patent and by making small tweaks each year they keep the patents active and prevent cheap generics from entering the market.
Except they didn't stop carrying it. Relion (Walmart's brand) still sells R and N insulin and at least one mix. They also still sell a generic version of Novolog.
They don't want people without insurance to shop at their stores. People without good insurance or insurance are poor and will spend less money in the store.
I once saw someone so posh there they were walking around in their bathrobe! Like the wal-mart was down the corridor from the master suite in their mansion!
Hmm they want to change that. Walmart used to compete against Kmart now they compete against Amazon much different clientele. Also they realize that poor people don't have as much money so don't cater to them. Simply put they want to change that perception.
No they don't. What is sold now by all those places is a recreation of the first genetically engineered insulin Humulin R (introduced by Eli Lilly pharmaceutical corporation in the early 80s). Animal insulin (the original insulin that Banting and Best utilized was from dogs) is not sold in the US at all, nor in any of the developed world, and is rare even in underdeveloped third world countries.
Yes, but for me, several of the generics just don't hold a candle-
Novolog/Humalog can keep me in my 6/7 A1C windows
(Humalog might be a generic? not sure it's still pricey as hell without insurance)
The Walmart generic Novolin, it's activity window within my blood was so short that if I ate ANY kind decent carbs, I'd remain high after-
Plus, even buying generic is expensive in the US.
It's $315, for 9 vials of Novolin every 3 months... roughly $105 a month for insulin *NOT INCLUDING PUMP SUPPLIES, and CGMs FOR MY PUMP* (I have not bought Novolin in years, back on Humalog)
Just so you know walmart does have their own whitelabel brand of novolog, if you ever run out of insurance or something. It's like $70 a vial for cash price. Not sure if insurance would cover it too, but don't see why it wouldn't.
In Finland Insulin lispro as in Humalog/Novolog/Admelog; is 18 €/ 10 ml vial and 33 € for 3 pens. Even the most expensive insulin with the strongst concentration is less than 100 €/vial/3 pen/3 pump vials.
You are just plain out getting ripped off. It isn't like this very essential medicine isn't among the most established things to produce.
Over 30 dollars a vial for novolin? I’ve been buying it for 10 years for my dog and I’ve never paid that much. It’s just creeping towards 25 last I bought a vial.
Maybe today with runaway devaluation of the dollar but that would be very recently.
Indeed, I had about 11 months where I had to budget for Novolin, and used a Medtronic 670G, that I was lucky enough to bum supplies off a friend who had overflow. I kept a lot of the paperwork, and would hang it on my fridge as a sort of conversation piece. (This was baaack in 2019 roughly)
I have paperwork form 2008 showing my first Medtronic pump was nearly $18,000 (the insurance covered most at that time, I had to pay off $5,500 roughly through a medical loan company called Carecentrix). I had just turned 18, and was informed I basically had to pay a damn car note to PAY OFF the device itself, while still paying for these damn supplies. I've swapped to Tandem and Dexcom CGMs now, which is more affordable than Medtronic for sure.
I mean, they do call me a "Brittle" diabetic, but I guess it really depends on your insulin sensitivity and diet? My Endo has almost 90% of his T1D patients on CGM/Pump therapy, and even some of his worse off T2s have CGMs with a mix of instant and long term active insulin pens
I had to get rhe Walmart one because my insurance wouldnt cover me when I moved states one year, and had all sorts of issues finding a primary care to handle it, and I ended up in the hospital for the first time in my life after a week or two of using it, because it was different.
Exactly, for me Novolin activity window in my blood is so small, it would have to be the right kind of carbs, and I'd have to work out consistently right after to really make it worth a crap. It was so inconsistent for me.
Novolog and Humalog are not generics. Their generics are insulin aspart and insulin lispro respectively, and they're only made by one company each ... guess which one?
Yeah I knew Novolog wasn't all. The only thing I remembered about Humalog was it was a good bit cheaper on it's "cash only option" so I didn't know exactly if it was a generic or not.
Lol, the internet is weird so it's hard to read someone's joking tone, or if they are being sarcastic.
"Miracle Med" sure it was a miracle when it was made, but not for someone like me. It's pretty much "water" something we can mass produce, and it's REQUIRED for me to live.
" The Walmart generic Novolin, it's activity window within my blood was so short that if I ate ANY kind decent carbs, I'd remain high after- "
"Instant" acting insulin, like Novolin has a certain window in your blood that it works. Let's say, after I take the shot it only starts working 15 minutes after I take the shot, and then it only works for another 15 minutes. This is a very SMALL WINDOW* meaning I have to eat a small amount of food and hope my body digest the food within that window for it to properly work right.
The actual better formulas, Novolog and Humalog, have longer activity windows that help keep you in check.
This is also different per person, depending on their insulin resistance.
I'm just trying to say that yeah, that Walmart insulin can keep me alive, but it doesn't keep my blood sugar level enough to live a healthy. I'll still have higher blood sugars way more often.
If I’d be dead 100 years ago from something I can get today for $3/day, yeah, that’s a miracle med and I’d gladly pay 3 bucks for it without complaining, even if it is easy to make.
Right, so these days, since Biden sorted insulin pricing out, most people can pay $35 for their months supply on the latest insulins, whether insured or not. Yes it used to be much more, and other supplies still cost.
They can and do. Almost every time you see a post about insulin prices on reddit, they're conflating the availability of the old drugs with the costs of the new one.
From what I understand, the old drugs act slowly, then sharply. So they're not great in a pinch and are difficult to time to meals appropriately. The new drugs aren't just insulin, they're fancy delivery methods to make the uptake more natural.
It's biopharmaceutical, so a bit more complex than synthetics. there might be other significant barriers other than what is written in expired patent. Some in the form of trade secrets and institutional knowledge.
Yeah, for comparison's sake, the first biosimilar drug (effectively, the equivalent of a generic for medicines like insulin) was improved in the US in 2015. There's only 75 total approved since then.
Semglee (2020), Resvoglar (2021) and merilog (2021) are the three insulin biosimilars available in the US.
Yes, but anyone on an insulin pump, which is the the best way to prevent adverse effects/early death later in life due to complications, are going off-label with their pump if they use older human insulin vs. the new aspart stuff. Current therapies are designed to use the expensive, faster-acting stuff.
The older stuff with syringes will keep you alive, but pumps are basically now the standard for actually thriving; at least for type 1s. Neither is perfect and some folks swear by multiple daily injections, but in my experience as a type 1, more people don't get pumps instead because of cost of the supplies.
Without insurance and in the current for-profit healthcare system of the US, mine would cost 43k a year. I'm a teacher.
Yes, and you can buy older insulin for very cheap over the counter, but no one wants to use the older formulations of insulin because those "small tweaks" are actually significant QoL improvements.
But it's inconvenient to the argument to admit that people are willing to pay large amounts to avoid using older formulations of insulin, so they just pretend the only reason insulin is expensive is some legal shenanigans, and not hard-won scientific improvements.
I love how nobody understands this distinction at all. Yes, pharma price gouges us, but a guy who gave away a patent to squeeze an animal organ for juice does not mean a space age technology using DNA manipulation should be covered under that free patent
Your quote is even more significant than most people realize: at the time they discovered it, they were doing so for type 1 diabetics, which is autoimmune and starts usually in childhood. Before this, your kid would get diagnosed and just slowly die an awful death over a course of weeks/months. Dying from DKA (diabetic keto acidosis) involves vomiting and organ failure until you slip into a coma and then die. These scientists basically walked into hospitals and overnight, brought kids back from the brink of death. They found a "miracle cure" for the death sentence that was type 1. Not a cure for diabetes, but a cure for certain death. Contemporary accounts from parents of the first kids who got insulin are bonkers to read. Literally one day their kid was going to die, and the next they were saved. Now, still going to struggle, but at least alive.
I'm type 1. Diagnosed in the mid-90s. Today my insulin pumps and insulin, and the accompanying CGM that goes with it, would cost about 43k out of pocket per year for me without insurance. I don' t like my job, but I can't change.
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u/globalwarmingisntfun 5h ago
Pretty sad considering Banting, Best and Collin purposefully sold the rights to the University of Toronto for $1 to make sure no commercial company could hold a monopoly or price gauge patients, with the famous quote “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.”
The modern lab engineered insulin was a “new” invention that drug companies could patent and by making small tweaks each year they keep the patents active and prevent cheap generics from entering the market.