FTC Accuses Drug Middlemen of Inflating Insulin Prices
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Intuitively, a healthy market should prevent this kind of price gouging because there’s a strong incentive for new players to undercut incumbents. I can’t charge too much for gas because the station across the street will undercut me. If prices are growing that isn’t necessarily a bad sign. But we have seen several areas, like rent prices, eggs, meat, and oil, where profits grew unconstrained. And that’s a strong indicator that something is wrong.
Lena Khan is very sharp and seems to be cracking down on this kind of thing. I just hope she is able to continue.
Much, maybe even half of the country does not believe this though. Until that changes nothing will.
late edit: I personally believe this, but I’ve lost faith in this government’s ability to do this role without extreme corruption, so meh. No idea what to do really.
I wish people would stop calling what we have a healthcare system. We have a medical industry, which seeks to provide a minimum of medical services for maximum profit. The system is working exactly as designed.
There are plenty of other examples.
Wait, so you're implying the medical industry is responsible for people eating meat and drinking coffee?
However, a more generous interpretation of their comment would probably sound something more like “some substances/products get banned on the grounds of being detrimental to people’s health, but this isn’t happening to coffee/meat despite their claimed dangers. This must be due to the medical industry lobbying or controlling all world government bodies, so that the industry can extract more revenue from people.”
It is still a conspiracy theory full of holes, but imo that feels more representative of what the grandparent likely meant.
Turns out, the shareholders really preferred getting a pile of money over other people who are not themselves getting a even bigger pile of money. Bunch of moneygrubbers ruining a good gig.
It has now come to the FTC to protect us because the FDA has been strongly aligned with big money. If Trump comes to power, however, the FTC would be on the chopping block.
Knowingly pushing type 2 patients towards insulin when cheaper, better options for them might exist can 100% be blamed on the manufacturers; however, the oft-maligned list price increases have a lot to do with the mostly-secret negotiations between manufacturers, PBMs, and health plans (many of which share ownership with the PBMs). A big effect of those negotiations helps to artificially increase the amount of dollars spent on drugs (on paper) while also artificially decreasing the actual dollars spent, making it easier for health plans to hit the ACA 80/20 rule with elevated premiums.
All of this to say...none of these price negotiations or middlemen entities (I'm counting health plans as middlemen between patients and their drugs...) should be targeted by the FDA, as that's not their responsibility. The FDA should be focused on the clinical side only as much as possible. Much to my chagrin, some amount of credit for PBMs and drug rebates being part of the modern conversation goes to the Trump administration.