Hacker News Reader

Comment by kakoni | Hacker News Reader

Whats up with those US prices, Humalog more than $250 per vial? In Europe (Finland) non-subsidized price is $34.

That's incredible. Humalog is a quite similar low price in Canada. It's strange that it'd actually be economical for many American diabetics to just book a (yearly) flight to Canada and buy 12 months worth of insulin.

The NHS pays $23 in the UK. <https://bnf.nice.org.uk/medicinal-forms/insulin-lispro.html>

Drug pricing in the US is complicated. Humalog list price has doubled in the last few years, but the rebates have increased faster and the average net price is actually going down. The average discount is 75%!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-29/the-crazy...

So it's $75 a vial, only three times as much as the NHS.

I am not sure that it is complicated so much as, they gouge anyone they can in the US.

Not complicated at all, insulin keeps people alive and our shareholders need a return on their investment.

They gouge anyone they can, but the fact is that they cannot do it as well as before with the “old” products because their sales are going down (in dollars, despite an increase in volumes). And the “new” products are often not good enough to justify higher prices.

Edit: By the way, we’re not talking about insulin (which has been keeping people alive since the 20’s) but about insulin analogues developed in the 90’s.

As others have stated, pricing and insurance in the US is a complete rats nest. There are rebates and discount card programs available to the vast majority of patients that mean that most patients are paying much much less than that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com