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The cap on insulin cost is only for those with insurance. If you are uninsured, good luck. >

If you don't have some kind of insurance, even something like those GoodRx coupons, you're not paying for insulin, not for long anyway. When I was a teen (mid 00's) my dad went to go grab my insulin at the pharmacy and instead of the normal price they tried to charge him $2800 for a 2-week supply. It ended up being just a random glitch in their system and later they charged us the same normal price. But that would've been the cost for half a month's worth of one medication out of the nearly 6-8 others I need(ed) in conjunction. Getting sick past a cold/flu in America without insurance or free medical care at your disposal is a death sentence. And not only are you going to die, you're going to go flat broke doing it. >

Most insulin caps are just caps on personal expenditures, meaning that companies actually have no reason to charge less for insulin. They're still raking in the profits, it's just that medicare or insurance picking up the tab. We have not solved the problem of insulin being overpriced, we have just spread its cost over everybody. >

wdym? like individual companies cap it for their own products? or cap it for individual ppl? >

Let's say a 30-day supply of insulin costs $150 and the price is capped at $30.
The company selling the insulin still makes $150, it's just that you personally only ever pay $30. Your insurance provider or medicare is forced to pick up the other $120 of cost.
This means that everyone paying the insurance company, and everyone paying into medicare (most people) are just footing the bill. 
So, insulin price caps doesn't stop the insulin companies from screwing us over. It just changes how they're screwing us over. Their prices never actually went down. Before, it was the diabetic person getting screwed out of their money. Now we're all getting screwed out of our money. We don't notice as much, because the cost is spread out over all of us, but it's still wrong. >

ok, that's fair, but a lot of posts I see are companies or politicians making a statement to lower insulin costs in general, which are the ones I'm talking abt >


ut a lot of posts I see are companies or politicians making a statement to lower insulin costs in general,

I challenge you to find a person proposing to cap the price of insulin who isn't doing it in the way I described.
When the politician says "I'm going to lower the price of insulin" they're always talking about personal expenditures, never the total cost. >

Doesn't capping insulin prices just mean that people will only be sold shitty insulin that is already cheap? No one is going to sell the new costly shit at a loss.
You can go get a month supply if insulin right now for around $30, but it will be the old formulation which doesn't work that will and your long term outcome will be worse than with the new costly stuff. An artificial set price won't change profit margin, just outcomes for patients who will receive sub par treatment. >

Think of a price cap with any other good and think if it sounds like a good idea. Let's say you can legally only charge $500 for a computer, after all, those are basically necessary in modern life. Well now, no one is going to make good computers any more, everyone will just make the worst computer that people will still buy at $500.  
Rent control is the classic example for this. If you say rent is fixed at X dollars, landlords will only do the bare minimum for their tenants. After all, providing more value wouldn't give them any more money. No matter how good the apartment is, they can only charge X dollars.   
In recent years, ultra-rapid insulin has become approved and available for consumers. If the price of insulin was limited to $35, there would be no reason to invest billions into creating different forms of insulin. Ultra-rapid, or other newer kinds of insulin wouldn't have been developed. 
. >

This is clearly false. Medication already had some of the best margins in the world. You don't need to be charging $400 for something that cost you $5 to make to incentivize innovation. If you did, there would be basically no innovation in any area, since the only thing with margins that good are illegal. >

Do you think production and material costs are the expensive part of making pharmaceuticals? Because they are not even close. It's the R&D + marketing + all the "grease" it takes to get your drug reviewed/approved for human consumption. >

Do you think that justifies a $400 price point? It doesn't. >


Do you think that justifies a $400 price point? It doesn't.

Depending on the medication, your right. It has to be HIGHER to be worthwhile.
You are not understanding the fact there is 10-12 year typical period of exclusive rights to allow a drug maker to recoup all of the costs of development and trials. Not just for the successful medication, but also for the unsuccessful ones too. 
It is really simple math to understand. How many patients are going to take the meds and more importantly, how many doses given during that 10-12 year period. Then figure out how many Billions of dollars you need to recoup. It is not too hard to find out why some drugs do cost $10,000 per treatment.
If you goal is to recoup 8 Billion, at $400 a dose, you have to sell 20 million doses. That is just to break even on the recoup of costs. >


If you goal is to recoup 8 Billion, at $400 a dose, you have to sell 20 million doses. That is just to break even on the recoup of costs.

There are about 7 million people who require insulin daily. You don't seem to realize just how quickly that money is made back. >

But the company only really has that 10-12 year window to profit. After that, any company can make a generic version and undercut the originator by absurd amounts because they don't have all that money invested to cover before extracting profit. >

I'm not sure where you're getting the 10 to 12 year thing from when parents last for 20 years, but it doesn't really matter. These multi-billion dollar corporations can recoup all of their expenses within a few months and then ONLY have 10 years to sell something at a 99% margin? Poor babies. It must be rough.
Let's put it this way: they make so much money that they can waste it paying people on social media to go around simping for them.