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Comment by testfrequency | Hacker News Reader

Not going to lie, I really hate all the recent coverage on Metformin becoming a “miracle pill” - as I’ve been on Metformin for almost 10 years now without issue.

I really hope my prescription costs and access to Metformin is not ruined by everyone’s quest to out live their children

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I'm on Metformin and not worried about it given the likely reason you ended up on Metformin 10 years ago is it was already generic and cheap to make, especially compared to many of the alternatives. Where you get screwed is needing a pill that's under heavy patents or still complicated/expensive to make even when it isn't.

More people taking medication lower price not increases it.

That is true in a lot of areas. Unfortunately, that's not how the pharma industry works. If a medication is patented, the company who owns it sets the price (or licensing price) according to demand. As an example, there was a scandal or two in the past few years where private equity firms were buying pharma companies and jacking up the price of medications to the point where the users of those medications got to choose between bankruptcy and living.

(Disclaimer 1: I don't know if metformin is patented.)

(Disclaimer 2: This is not an anti-capitlaist rant. Capitalism works fine with adequate governmental regulation. However, practically nothing about the US healthcare system is adequately regulated.)

Metformin was invented in the 1920s, and achieved widespread usage in the 1950s. It's far beyond any patent terms.

Metformin is off patent and is easy to make. You will have no problems.

So is insulin. But at least in the US, it is expensive.

It is my understanding that the expensive insulin is actually more complicated than the insulin that we had a couple of decades ago and that makes it easier to dose correctly so that therapeutic outcomes are improved.

That was due to cartel behavior (and now should be limited by the recent drug capping initiative) - elsewhere in the world insulin is extremely affordable.

Insulin is an interesting case because the insulin you get today is manufactured in a different process than the original batches which has let manufacturers skirt around both generic alternatives and the original patent.

Well, not so much anymore. It's capped at $35/mo if you're on Medicare or ACA and most other sources.

https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...

I'd also mention that most of the insulin these days is not extracted from animals as it once was. One can make arguments for/against this, but for safety reasons almost all of it is now made with biopharmaceutical (bacterial recombinant) processes.

I believe it's expensive for the delivery system, not the insulin itself. (Could be wrong).

Off patent it's cheap, but the on patent stuff is way better, so it's what everyone wants

Artificial scarcity of these drugs is an intentional choice.

We need more garage chemists so that it can be a less consequential one.

Compounding pharmacies get around this. My friend runs a very profitable online pharmacy backed by them (which he also owns).

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