Number of people suffering from diabetes has risen exponentially, demand goes up, so do the prices.
It's going to stabilize as years go on.
It's going to stabilize as years go on.
There's just more people suffering from diabetes T2 than ever before. Someone is just profiting off of large demand.
Said cheap stuff from everywhere cannot be legally mass-imported into Western countries (and that for good reason).
> Collusion on that scale is not possible
Oh it certainly is. The "old" insulin may be produced as a generic but the new varieties (as described by the article) are patented by a few companies.
In addition insulin production is extremely expensive compared to simple pill pressing as you need bioreactors and GMOs to produce it. Many generics vendors opt out of that complexity.
But what of the long term? With products such as food, one expects that the best land is already in production, so increasing supply will require bringing marginal land into use, at higher cost. Supply is inelastic and prices rise. Similarly for minerals. One is usually mining the richest ores. To increase supply one has to spend more freely refining lower grade ores.
There are no such constraints for producing insulin in medicinal quantities. The supply should be completely elastic, with the result that prices do not rise.