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Comment by falcor84 | Hacker News Reader

This is the meaningful part:

> The California governor, a Democrat, said earlier this year that the state would soon start making its own brand of insulin. California has a $50m contract with the non-profit pharmaceutical company Civica Rx to manufacture the insulin under the brand CalRx. The state would sell a 10-milliliter vial of insulin for $30.

> “With CalRx, we are getting at the underlying cost, which is the true sustainable solution to high-cost pharmaceuticals,” Newsom wrote in a message explaining why he vetoed the bill on Saturday. “With co-pay caps however, the long-term costs are still passed down to consumers through higher premiums from health plans.”

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Cheap insulin already exists right over the border and it's government that is in the way. I wonder why they don't start there instead of elaborate government manufactured insulin plans or price controls.

Agreed, there is no excuse to veto this just because some future project could potentially alleviate it later. Bring relief now.

There is an excuse. Political capital. It's not an excuse that is compelling, but this is Newsom. He's a Democrat that is trying to hold on to power for as long as he can, however he can.

He wants to run for president in 2028, not hold on to power.

Your comment makes no sense to me. It just doesn't track. Either he can parlay with pharma and point to how he kicked the bill, or he has to make excuses for not kicking the bill (regardless if he runs 2028 or not). It's political capital. It's power.

The point is that in the run up to the 2028 presidential campaign, Newsom isn't going to take any major actions which might alienate large swing voting blocs or major campaign donors (such as pharmaceutical companies). Unfortunately, low-income insulin dependant diabetics aren't a major political factor so regardless of what Newsom says in public, their needs aren't a priority for him.

Perhaps not solving the problem simply by allowing mexican medication, like New York doesn't simply solve pharmaceutical prices by importing Canadian drugs and keeping drug prices high in the present with promises of future fixes is a form of parlaying with Pharmaceutical companies

Good thing that’s not why it was vetoed.

You're missing the point. The insulin is the point. And the insulin is still expensive.

It would be easier to just import it from the border, either Mexico or Canada.

Ha. So lie and then when called on the lie, presume the person who called out the lie is “missing the point”.

Goalposts, rocket mode, launch!

Is the insulin cheaper now? No.

Sorry am I missing something here. If the cheap insulin across the border got the full brunt of American demand, it would obviously not remain abundant for that country. Even if this country (canada?) had price controls in place that would be no use to factories with a set supply.

Seems like the right solution is to increase supply right here.

Americans got to Mexico for cheap insulin. Sometimes they get murdered for their troubles so that's a downside.

Crazy that people risk their life to save a couple bucks

Crazy that people without a few bucks have to risk their lives to save their lives.

Diabetics die very quickly without insulin.

Crazy that people who can't survive without insulin, food, and rent money see the risk of dying from violence as less than the risk of dying from poverty.

Either die for sure from lack of insulin, or have a chance of not dying by crossing the border. The math checks out

You understand that production can be scaled up right?

Arbitrarily? To how much? When building the factories do we know if Canada had accounted for servicing the American market (just the California market would be a 100% increase)

What's your point?

What would most likely happen is that insulin factories would scale up production and price would go down in the long term (economies of scale and increased competition). That's what free trade pretty much always does to prices.

Which is exactly what the California government funded? Just in Utah via a non-profit. Seems like a win-win.

What is the mechanism? They're California state authorities not Federal authorities.

> the state would soon start making its own brand of insulin.

The government's definition of "soon" is probably not the same as the electorate's definition of soon.

Government has a very poor track history of manufacturing products. I am not optimistic about this at all.

It's good, then, that the non-profit pharmaceutical company called Civica Rx will manufacture the insulin under the brand CalRx.

California nonprofits are typically a special breed of corruption.

I feel like we’re trying very hard to dislike a good thing here

Have you lived in California?

Have you Googled Civica Rx?

> Headquarters: Lehi, UT

What does that have to do with living in California? And you know they have no track record yet right? They didn’t even exist until 2018!

The perennial issue is big promises, total shit delivery, way over budget and late - if ever. Regardless of where the subcontractor lives. They’ve already been talking about the insulin plan for several years.

But hey, maybe 2024 is the new promise.

Have you heard about our ‘high speed rail’ project, for instance? It isn’t even high speed anymore!

You didn't say living in California, you said "California non-profits". But sure, keep moving the goalposts if it makes you happy. Why are you even still living there?

No I didn’t. I asked if you had lived in California. Explicitly. Go ahead, read the comment again.

Oh, I see, I assumed you were the OP continuing a conversation. But no, you’re not the OP, you’re someone else that came into the thread to ask a question you yourself admit has nothing to do with the thread.

Yeah, I’m done here, later.

And how does your lack of experience with California not have anything to do with your claims about California’s gov’t programs effectiveness?

Could you provide any information on that, rather than just vague remarks? Or more helpfully, information regarding CalRx specifically?

If you provided a link showing that some of its leadership had a history of corruption, that would be one thing, but instead we got an unsourced quip about "California nonprofits."

Good thing it's a Utah nonprofit, then.

Fucking got'em

Throwaway quip tripling down on vague aspersions about something good.

Sometimes things are good.

I had a hard time even thinking of stuff the government manufactures. Best I came up with is physical currency, passports and other ID, and license plates. All of those are of quite good quality and reasonably priced, so I'd have to disagree.

Try nuclear bombs or tanks.

As the parent comment quotes, government will not be manufacturing the insulin.

Then they'll be outcompeted by the free market. We'll soon see how efficient big business is compared to government.

The US government has a surprisingly good track record when it manufactures stuff internally. Outsourcing that to private contractors is more troubled, but nonprofits tend to work out reasonably well.

Comparing to the cost paid per dose of COVID vaccines 30$ insulin is easily achievable.

What has the US government manufactured without outsourcing to contractors?

Recently it’s a small list, but physical currency is one example. They do outsource the paper etc, but if you compare costs and results to private companies doing similar work there’s no incentive to outsource the full process.

Saturn V

Go read some history: that was built by various contractors, such as Rocketdyne that manufactured the engines.

The rocket was not. Of course you will have components built by industry. You can't expect government to mine the iron and mill the steel for every bolt.

The engines were easily the most complex components of the whole system. They're not like buying some bolts.

Except it kind of was. Car companies don’t manufacture the most complex components in house either.

Those things were custom, but NASA saved a great deal of money going with an existing supplier of giant rocket engines who had already been working in scaling up their designs.

Most car companies do indeed produce their own engines. It's why many of them are named "XYZ Motor Company".

Of course, they don't produce their own microchips for all the electronic stuff in cars these days, and I suppose you could say those are more complex, but back in the 60s when the Saturn V was made, the engines were probably the most complex things in cars.

Over half all heavy duty trucks in the 1960’s used Cummins engines. Their engines made their way into Doge RAM trucks etc. Aircraft manufacturers also tend to outsource engines as do shipyards building boats.

Most major car companies did and do manufacture engines in house, but it’s common to find some outsourced engines and various joint ventures used by automotive manufacturers.

Some 1960’s examples Lotus Seven S2, Marcos 1500 GT, Otosan Anadol, TVR Grantura, all used Ford engines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine

Well of course a bunch of ultra-tiny car manufacturers are going to use outsourced engines. The major automakers never have, outside of a few odd projects (like the Ford Taurus SHO with the Yamaha engine) and joint ventures.

Heavy-duty trucks and aircraft are very different situations.

Sure, but I think we can safely say the Saturn V was hardly a mass market product.

Rockets following the aircraft approach of 3rd party engines is fairly common. Many Atlas rockets using the RD-180 engines comes to mind.

Chrysler has been using Cummins engines for ages. They are in the Jeep Wrangler.

Hard to imagine you can do worse than private industry.

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