> Free market at work. It only took the inefficient guberment to step in for competition to materialize.
Your lack of knowledge on the matter mixed with self-righteousness is astounding. I suggest you to research beyond newspaper headlines.
Insulin that's being sold today is very different from insulin that was invented a century ago. The reason it's so different is precisely because private businesses had incentives to innovate, which resulted in prolonged patient lives.
You know what slows down modern insulin from becoming cheap in the US, even after patents have expired? A government agency called FDA. By the time you can get your generic insulin to the market, it might become obsolete. Competition isn't materialized, it is artificially limited by the bureaucratic government.
(not to mention that patents themselves are also enforced by the government, but that's a much more complex topic)
In order to get cheaper insulin you need less government, not more. Evidently, that's why insulin is cheaper in India, China, or Mexico.
> Tell me why, in an efficient market, the government would need to step in and start it's own production [2] or even mandate [1] price caps?
Californian local production of insulin is an attempt, we've yet to see the results. It is quite possible that those funds would be better off spent on directly buying insulin instead of producing it.
Oh and by the way, you know how California plans to "produce" the insulin in the first years of the program? By outsourcing it to private companies. Isn't it convenient that those exist?
And, as illustrated earlier, price caps are a government "crutch" to cover a bigger government (FDA) inefficiency.