You’re only deciding between insulin and groceries because the government maintains some company’s monopoly on manufacturing insulin.
In an actually free market, the instructions would be open source and the only question would be whether to synthesize it at home or pay someone else to synthesize it for you.
My guess is it would cost about as much as chocolate does per unit mass.
Capitalism created American price gouging. You have people dying over something that’s completely treatable.
If the “resources were allocated” correctly, then it’s not efficient in any way for an economy to have people dying over something as cheap and easy to treat just because someone can blackmail people to pay more.
My unemployed friend who is a single mother with type 1 diabetes and who has two kids with type one diabetes would be in real fucking life danger in the US. As it stands, she doesn’t need to worry about that. All because we haven’t (yet) allowed capitalism to (completely) rape our healthcare system.
Yeah I know. One of the big differences between prescription drugs and food, in terms of the industries, is that anyone can bake bread and therefore the only reason to buy it at the store is if the loaf at the store costs less time and energy than making it oneself.
Insulin, like most meds in the US, is expensive because of the free market.
If you have a free market on life-saving medicine, guess what, people will pay however much they can afford and then some - because people are keen to survive.
In most (all?) European countries medicines are regulated. Some medicines have many manufacturers, some have a “government-enforced” monopoly but without free market, and the result is that no matter the country, insulin is free or almost free. The reason is that when you regulate this, and the only possible buyer for a whole country is “the government”, the seller is forced to negotiate with the whole government to be able to sell to X million people. And the government is not in a life or death situation, so it’s less vulnerable to price gouging.
If the governments can negotiate a low enough price, then they can subsidise the last bit via taxes and people get free life-saving drugs. Yet big-pharma still gets profits at these lower prices, as evidenced by the number of pharma companies there are in Europe (including non-eu countries that work similarly in terms of healthcare such as UK, Switzerland).
Free market works, until the seller has a life-threatening reason why the buyer will be forced to pay whatever the price is. The drug situation in the US is not free market, it’s free blackmail.
Hard lol at the thought of synthesizing insulin at home. Look a bit into the practical aspects of medicine manufacturing and the quality assurances required to avoid killing the patients.
You’re only deciding between insulin and groceries because the government maintains some company’s monopoly on manufacturing insulin.
In an actually free market, the instructions would be open source and the only question would be whether to synthesize it at home or pay someone else to synthesize it for you.
My guess is it would cost about as much as chocolate does per unit mass.
No free market on insulin here in Finland.
Insulin is free.
Capitalism created American price gouging. You have people dying over something that’s completely treatable.
If the “resources were allocated” correctly, then it’s not efficient in any way for an economy to have people dying over something as cheap and easy to treat just because someone can blackmail people to pay more.
My unemployed friend who is a single mother with type 1 diabetes and who has two kids with type one diabetes would be in real fucking life danger in the US. As it stands, she doesn’t need to worry about that. All because we haven’t (yet) allowed capitalism to (completely) rape our healthcare system.
The free market naturally generates monopolies, only government intervention can maintain an artificially competitive market in the long term.
Both of these are pure fantasies. Here in the real world the monopolies are government enforced and it’s getting worse.
What you’re describing is to abolish “intellectual property” rights. I’m all for it.
Those are two nonequivalent industries with wildly different variables of influence. Did AI write this?
No, the one who wrote that is intensely human, trust them.
Yeah I know. One of the big differences between prescription drugs and food, in terms of the industries, is that anyone can bake bread and therefore the only reason to buy it at the store is if the loaf at the store costs less time and energy than making it oneself.
A better equivalency would be the insulin industry and a Diamond industry unrestricted by region.
Not really because people can die without food, and also without insulin. Nobody is choosing between diamonds and insulin.
Insulin is expensive because of a government-enforced monopoly. It’s a simple fact, no matter how motivated one is to ignore it.
Insulin, like most meds in the US, is expensive because of the free market.
If you have a free market on life-saving medicine, guess what, people will pay however much they can afford and then some - because people are keen to survive.
In most (all?) European countries medicines are regulated. Some medicines have many manufacturers, some have a “government-enforced” monopoly but without free market, and the result is that no matter the country, insulin is free or almost free. The reason is that when you regulate this, and the only possible buyer for a whole country is “the government”, the seller is forced to negotiate with the whole government to be able to sell to X million people. And the government is not in a life or death situation, so it’s less vulnerable to price gouging.
If the governments can negotiate a low enough price, then they can subsidise the last bit via taxes and people get free life-saving drugs. Yet big-pharma still gets profits at these lower prices, as evidenced by the number of pharma companies there are in Europe (including non-eu countries that work similarly in terms of healthcare such as UK, Switzerland).
Free market works, until the seller has a life-threatening reason why the buyer will be forced to pay whatever the price is. The drug situation in the US is not free market, it’s free blackmail.
Hard lol at the thought of synthesizing insulin at home. Look a bit into the practical aspects of medicine manufacturing and the quality assurances required to avoid killing the patients.
Well if those regulations are going away anyway…