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Comment by anonuser123456 | Hacker News Reader

A lot. Insulin is a category of human insulin analogs. Each analog has unique properties.

You can have the ‘old insulin’ for something like 25$ / 1k units. But it’s very hard to use relative to modern analogs, so people prefer modern analogs.

Edit: Minus points for facts that disrupt the narrative. I love it.

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My family member uses Humalog and it's patent expired in 2014 yet it's hundreds of dollars:

https://medcitynews.com/2019/03/lilly-to-introduce-lower-pri...

The problem is that there isn't competition on the market for this product. The Open Insulin people were trying to make it available to the public but they are stuck trying to get through the regulation.

It's entirely possible that if we got rid of the regulation then the whole problem takes care of itself and it becomes a non issue.

IMO it's not the regulation that is the problem...it's the entire healthcare system we have in the US.

Humalog and other types of the same exact insulin are pennies on the dollar in other countries with very different healthcare compensation programs between the vendors and purchases. It's bizarre to say the least.

This is precisely because the US market pays for all of the risk. Once the risk is paid for by the US market, it’s very cheap to sell extra capacity to other countries. All the fixed costs are already paid for and the risks are low.

You can buy generic novolog at Walmart for 75$ for 1000 units vs. 550$ list for the same of branded humalog.

But basically you are correct that regulation is the largest barrier to price reductions. Patients pay the price of FDA regulation (for better or worse). That’s not really the drug companies fault.

>But it’s very hard to use relative to modern analogs, so people prefer modern analogs

Are you actually suggesting people are going into debt [1] and killing themselves[2] just because they prefer modern analogs?

[1] this post

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

If you are very rigorous with diet and exercise, you can live with the old stuff.

The new stuff lets you eat a wider range of foods without having to time everything precisely or worry as much. about hypoglycemic events.

I don’t know if that’s a preference or if it reflects the way Drs treat T1 patients.

>so people prefer modern analogs

>I don’t know if that’s a preference

so which one is it?

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