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The US insulin market is a regulatory and legislative failure. If you’re a biotech investor with a few billion dollars to burn, sure, a high-margin, high-volum
by twoodfin 3y ago
The US insulin market is a regulatory and legislative failure.
If you’re a biotech investor with a few billion dollars to burn, sure, a high-margin, high-volume biologic looks like an appealing bet.
But then you look at what’s involved in the FDA approval process even after Congress added carveouts for bio-similar generics.
And at the end of that billion dollar gauntlet, there’s Congress insisting that, damn-the-market and our own regulatory hurdles, insulin is so important it must be sold at a modest fraction over cost of production. This is a life saving substance, to which many who can certainly afford to pay would ascribe considerable value (this is the “demand” in supply & demand). The result of these price controls will inevitably be shortages, which will be blamed on the same greedy capitalists who are being blamed for the state of a market ultimately structured by this same Congress.
- elzbardico 3y agoThe fact is that in a sizable portion of the world (and I am not talking about Cuba, China or some leftist south american government, I am talking about western europe, and western european countries with a higher GDP per capita and higher HDI than the US, like Switzerland, Sweden and Norway) a) Insulin is cheaper, a fucking lot cheaper b) Its prices (along with a lot of other drugs) are regulated. I haven't yet heard from my friends in Switzerland, Norway or Belgium any sad story about people rationing their insulin supplies because it is mind bogling expensive, and shortages are also unheard of. Insulin is basically a solved problem. I don't care about an hypothetical techbro sad story of how he won't invest his billions to disrupt the insulin market because bad government doesn't allow it to sell untested products.