Insulin prices have increased SO MUCH over the past 50 years, it's disgusting. The manufacturers' margins just keep climbing because they know they can raise prices without consequence.
They have? According to testimony by Sanofi, even though list price have went up 126%, net price has actually gone down 25%.
https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/26FEB2019BRANDI...
Good thing it's covered in the report
>What about revenue?
Surely your accounting class tell you that rising revenue doesn't necessarily mean that "margins just keep climbing"
net price =/= profit. The report also covers what exactly goes into the difference between gross and net price. If you can point out what the accounting tricks are, that'll be great.
It’s particularly gross and brazen, even by pharmaceutical rent-seeking standards, to justify cocaine-like profit margins because large buyers can negotiate.
Insulin prices are driven by anticompetitive behavior. If you look at metformin, a generic drug treating the same disease, profit margins are tight, driven by competitive economics. A 90-day supply is < $10 retail.
Medicine, such as FIASP...
Just look at the difference in taxes on salary between France and the US. Half of what is payed by employers to workers goes to social protection (this is in addition to the company taxes). If you add VAT and income taxes the amount of disposable money is a fraction of what you would get in the US, nothing magic.
20 euros per 10ml (about 2 weeks of use for me) is still kind of a good money for a product I cannot stop using...
The important thing is that insulin prices haven't been going up. You can continue to get the same insulin as 50 years ago for pretty much the same price modulo inflation.
And anyway, the Netherlands getting cheap stuff is a side-effect of innovation here. America builds for America, driven by American needs, and you guys benefit as a result. There's a reason recombinant DNA tech (which backs modern insulin) came from the Bay Area and not the Netherlands. NL has twice the pop of the Bay and a fraction of the inventions. A single university here has like 5x as many Nobel Prize winners as that entire country.
I mean, I'm glad you're able to buy insulin cheap but we're richer and we're the ones driving progress, so we'll keep at it because we want a better life for ourselves (and if you benefit, it's fine). You're not capable of making that for us, yourselves, or anyone really.
Legal hostage taking in this way is uniquely US.