“This was an unexpected victory in a long fight against an illegal cartel of three corporations who have raised their insulin prices in lockstep.”

The Biden Administration pleasantly stunned health care reform advocates Tuesday by including short-acting insulin in its list of 10 drugs for which Medicare will negotiate lower prices, power vested in the White House by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The IRA was passed in the face of one of the heftiest barrages of lobbying in congressional history, with the pharmaceutical industry spending more than $700 million over 2021 and 2022 — several times more than the second- and third-ranking industries — much of it aimed at stopping the legislation, watering it down, or undermining its implementation.

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[–] 196 points 2 years ago (11 children)

They need to find a way to negotiate the price down for everyone, not just retirees. Kids need insulin.

And after that, epi pens.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Where are all of the "think of the children" folk? Not important now that they're born.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago

    "If you're pre-born, you're fine. If you're preschool, you're fucked." -- George Carlin

    Except even that isn't true, because those "choose life" assholes don't give two fucks about poor women without insurance being unable to afford pre-natal care. If your fetus dies from something preventable, fuck you lady.

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    [–] 150 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The pharmaceutical industry spent $700 million lobbying against this? What a bunch of assholes.

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  • [+] [S] 96 points 2 years ago (8 children)
  • [–] 75 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    A great way to tell that a business is making way too much money is when they can afford to hire monkey cages full of lawyers to fling every terrible legal argument they can think of at you in the hope that one of them somehow sticks.

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  • [–] 35 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And yet in every other country where they have to bargain against a centralized healthcare system, they are able to provide a decent price.

    The US needs to take decisive action against these sociopaths.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    The companies argue that the talks would force drugmakers to sell their medicines at huge discounts, below market rates. They assert this violates the Fifth Amendment, which requires the government to pay reasonable compensation for private property taken for public use.

    It will be interesting to watch this shake out, because this decision could have a lot of knock-off effects when it comes to further price negotiations by the government across a wide array of sectors.

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    [–] 93 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (9 children)

    When your reaction to poor, sick human beings getting the medicine they need without losing everything else in their lives is disappointment, you're a bad person.

    Fuck market capitalism and the sociopaths it creates.

    Edit: and of course they're actively suing from their steel towers for the right to continue to gouge sick, poor people deeper into poverty. What a humane economic system, amirite?

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    [–] 50 points 2 years ago

    Won't somebody think about the pharma shareholders!

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  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Meanwhile, those same companies sell for a fraction of the price all around the world.

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  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    I don't know how this is a negotiation...big pharma overcharges the USA by a lot...we all know it. How is this not illegal? Why are they not held accountable for inflating prices for 1 group of people? Imagine if they did the to just a single race...black, white, Asian, whatever... Is t it the same thing?

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    [–] 31 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Insurance companies when you need to use their service (which you pay monthly for):

    • sorry I'm your doctor now and I'm not going to pay for that test Insurance companies when they need to bribe law makers:
    • money go brrrtr
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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    As someone from the UK, I don’t know what to make of the Biden administration.

    I see positive news articles about what they’re doing, then I see people (not just right wing) saying it’s going poorly…

    Obviously things can always be better and there are going to be areas where they’re failing, but how actually is it going over all?

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    If we pretend Trump wasn't a thing, I'd say Biden is really living up to his campaign promise of "nothing will fundamentally change." By that I mean, he hasn't personally done anything amazing or terrible, and he hasn't gotten in the way of others, either.

    For instance, this has the fingerprints of Bernie Sanders all over it, who chairs several committees in congress, including the relevant one for this. Has Biden stopped Bernie Sanders? No, and while I wish that fact wasn't a win, it is.

    Bernie isn't alone in being the only good thing about our current government, either, but Biden also hasn't removed some of the terrible things the trump administration set up. The Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back a bunch of things I'm very upset about. It is my personal belief that he's heavily influenced by certain groups (insurance) but is trying in other areas.

    Biden isn't at all supporting policies that are just common sense if you live anywhere else, and while the UK isn't the best, I've discussed this with a British friend and I still include them in that. In short, you have more protections from your government that they need to try to remove first.

    In my opinion if Biden had been elected after Obama or after a normal Republican he would've basically had a quiet presidency and been one of the ones you don't really mention in history because nothing happened. Standard calls for corruption, but not worse than any regular senators. In today's world, that's positive, with Republican candidates promising to abolish the department of education, but in another world where things aren't full of neonazis and fascists, I'd be saying it's awful, because I would have wanted a president that would change things for the better, and now I'm just beaten down enough to be ok with "Nothing will fundamentally change."

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    [–] 20 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It must be getting close to a US election year. Suddenly, a Democratic president feigns to give a shit about the people who voted for him. Albeit grudgingly, of course, and knowing whatever he suggests now will be so watered down by the time it’s executed it will be like nothing happened at all.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I cannot caps this enough.

    ABOUT. GODDAMN. TIME.

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    [–] 19 points 2 years ago*

    The fact that sentence exists is pathetic for modern society.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Overdue

    The body count is as high as the tightrope on insulin price gouginf

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