From your story, it sort of sounds like doctors are the villains. Isn't it their job to choose the best medicine for their patients. If an uninsured patient ask

From your story, it sort of sounds like doctors are the villains. Isn't it their job to choose the best medicine for their patients. If an uninsured patient asks for a cheaper older one, then they should be prepared to find that. But then perhaps you could pass the buck to the patient for not finding a doctor willing to search for cheap drugs. It just goes round in circles. For insulin, is there even such as thing as "better"? It's not treating a disease with some probability of success that you want to maximize. It either works or it doesn't. At least that's my limited understanding.