The cost of a standard unit of insulin | Hacker News Reader

The cost of a standard unit of insulin

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19 pointssrameshc9 comments

I posted something along the same lines last week about my own struggles with the cost of healthcare in the US.

https://kingsley.sh/posts/2021/staggering-cost-of-surviving-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26497816

In my lil girl’s 147 ICU stay, $333,000+ of the $2.5m bill was IV medication. I wish they broke it down by medications because I would be really interested in seeing what makes up the $333k. She’s been both hyperglycaemic and hyperinsulinemic, really I’m just interested in what they charged for essentially sugar water.

Yeah, the cost of insulin is appalling.

In the US, outcomes for people with type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent) really have not improved substantially against other countries. In many ways, we have regressed. I personally have type 1 diabetes and care is so much different abroad.

This is just one symptom of our malady within the US healthcare system: it is about profit and not about improving the health, livelihood, and longevity of the general population.

I naturalized as a citizen with universal healthcare over stuff like insulin prices, although this was not the primary reason. I studied healthcare systems for hundreds of hours to figure out where I would need to establish myself. If anyone wants help or advice regarding healthcare systems and/or citizenship matters, I am here to help. Check my email on my profile.

The cost of insulin is not the only expense diabetics face. I have a Freestyle Libre Continuous Glucose monitor. Instead of finger sticks to put a drop of blood into a monitor, I have a sensor attached to my arm, and a reader that can read glucose levels by swiping the reader over the sensor as often as I want. When I was doing finger sticks, I was testing glucose approximately four times a day. Now that I have the CGM I test approximately 20 time a day. The improvement in my glucose control is significant.

I have Medicare and supplemental insurance, so my costs are all covered. If I didn't have insurance the uninsured cost of sensors used to be $350 every four weeks. Late last year the uninsured cost went up to $1074 every four weeks. This is just my most visible awareness of how badly healthcare in the United States is broken.

flash glucose monitor...

There were open source firmwares for a popular brand that lasted a few years but the company discontinued the hardware in favor these more disposable ones with crap batteries.

It’s a racket and it’s killing people.

> If anyone wants help or advice regarding healthcare systems and/or citizenship matters, I am here to help. Check my email on my profile.

I'll be emailing you. My wife and I are starting to work on a shortlist of countries to consider as immigration targets. I'm not interested in my children growing up in a "free market" healthcare system.

Something is very off here. A standard vial of insulin has 10 ml of insulin concentrated so there are 100 standard units per ml.

1000 units per vial. Even in America where our prices are bananas, the cash price of a vial of insulin is not 100k.

I believe the overall pricing trend, though. Maybe this is the cost per vial? It isn't even the cost per cc!

Yeah instead of “unit of insulin” he meant “vial of insulin”.

A standard vial of insulin is 10 mL. Generally speaking, the most common concentration of insulin is 100 units per milliliter. So, typically, a standard vial of insulin contains 1,000 units of insulin.

A single vial of insulin costs about 3.30 USD in Brasil. On pack of 100, each is about 2 USD.

For those who use the public health system it is free.

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