92% of house republicans hate diabetics

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hammerofglass
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Re: 92% of house republicans hate diabetics

Post by hammerofglass »

My criticism is actually the opposite. The companies still get to collect hundreds of dollars for each vial that costs less than ten to make, the cost is just distributed differently. The blatant collusion and price fixing that got us here isn't addressed at all.
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Re: 92% of house republicans hate diabetics

Post by Draco Dracul »

Mickey_Rat15 wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 1:56 pm So if the result of this is shortage of insulin or a rise in insurance costs, does that mean the people who voted for this hate diabetics or hate the public in general?

The idea that there are no perverse effects from government making simplistic dictates like this is the only way you can argue that anyone who is against this measure "hates diabetics".
I mean the other, better option would be for the government to call eminate domain over the manufacture of insulin and sell it at cost which would male it even cheaper than the 35 dollars proposed here.

Something like 96% of the end cost of insulin in the US is pure profit for the manufacturer. It a company charging that because they are the only people that make a drug in the public domain. If you want the price of generic drugs to come down we need nationalized manufacturing of drugs whose patents have expired. Ideally we would end for profit medicine all together, but barring that we need a pharmaceutical manufacturer that works for the public good rather than to make a few oligarchs money.
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Re: 92% of house republicans hate diabetics

Post by Fuzzy Necromancer »

Mickey_Rat15 wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 1:56 pm So if the result of this is shortage of insulin or a rise in insurance costs, does that mean the people who voted for this hate diabetics or hate the public in general?

The idea that there are no perverse effects from government making simplistic dictates like this is the only way you can argue that anyone who is against this measure "hates diabetics".
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Re: 92% of house republicans hate diabetics

Post by Mickey_Rat15 »

Fuzzy Necromancer wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 6:14 pm
Mickey_Rat15 wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 1:56 pm So if the result of this is shortage of insulin or a rise in insurance costs, does that mean the people who voted for this hate diabetics or hate the public in general?

The idea that there are no perverse effects from government making simplistic dictates like this is the only way you can argue that anyone who is against this measure "hates diabetics".
Defending rich people will not make you rich.
I am not defending "rich people" as this is not attacking rich people. As pointed out before, the pharmaceutical companies are still going to be paid the prices they are asking for. It does nothing to solve the regulatory capture problem that has created the issue. From what I can glean, the three pharmaceutical companies that make insulin are gaming the byzantine drug approval regulations to stifle competition using from older insulin formulas or chemically similar biologics. Congress is doing nothing to address the heart of the problem which it helped create. It is just ordering those who pay for private insurance to pick up the extra costs.
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Re: 92% of house republicans hate diabetics

Post by Draco Dracul »

Mickey_Rat15 wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 12:11 am I am not defending "rich people" as this is not attacking rich people. As pointed out before, the pharmaceutical companies are still going to be paid the prices they are asking for. It does nothing to solve the regulatory capture problem that has created the issue. From what I can glean, the three pharmaceutical companies that make insulin are gaming the byzantine drug approval regulations to stifle competition using from older insulin formulas or chemically similar biologics. Congress is doing nothing to address the heart of the problem which it helped create. It is just ordering those who pay for private insurance to pick up the extra costs.
It's not a regulatory capture issue. Even if eliminated all testing of insulin (terrible idea) you still wouldn't see competition pop up because this company can just destruction price any possible competitor out of the market. If a someone else starts making insulin, they can drop the price to below cost, let the other company become insolvent, and then jack the price right back up.

The most market friendly option for dealing with this and other price gouging practices is the set up a government drug manufacture for the specific purpose of producing drugs with expired patents and selling them at cost. This means the only companies losing out are those that are price gouging rather than developing new drugs and it would give companies that do this time to pivot to R and D.
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Re: 92% of house republicans hate diabetics

Post by clearspira »

It kind of comes down to this for me: I'm a capitalist. I think it has reached the top for a reason. But when you reach the point where the rich are blasting off into space on vacation and the poor are dying of preventable diseases, that really is where you say "something has gone wrong here."
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Re: 92% of house republicans hate diabetics

Post by Draco Dracul »

clearspira wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 2:02 pm It kind of comes down to this for me: I'm a capitalist. I think it has reached the top for a reason. But when you reach the point where the rich are blasting off into space on vacation and the poor are dying of preventable diseases, that really is where you say "something has gone wrong here."
Are you a business owner? Because if not you aren't a capitalist.

The thing is that this is the natural direction of capitalism, as a system it snowballs those with power and wealth will acquire more of both while also getting to decide the rules. People dying preventable diseases while the wealthiest get to play astronaut isn't some flaw of capitalism that needs to be ironed out, but it functioning exactly as intended.

There are two main reasons capitalism has reached the top, murdering the opposition and that it was backed by the people who were on top during feudalism. For the former not only has the US been willing to overthrow regimes advocating even modist reforms like in the global south like Guatemala and Iraq, but is also murders it's own citizens for advocating socialism like Fred Hampton. For the later in most of western Europe the richest families are the same families that were the richest 500 years ago.
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